The Phantom's Daughter
by Hester Gray's Garden
Summary: In which Erik fails to die of love, and a little match girl finds more than she bargained for in the cellars of the opera house. Leroux-based crossover with Hans Christian Anderson.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

**If this story seems oddly familiar, that is because I posted the first couple of chapters under a different username before my creative energies were sapped by morning sickness (although, on the plus side, I now have a beautiful baby son to make up for all those months of puking!)**

**Anyway, its unfinished state has been bothering me ever since, so I have set myself the goal of churning out a serviceable first draft while I'm on maternity leave. I'm hoping that posting here as I go along will give me a kick up the arse whenever I'm tempted to spend my son's nap-time doing something more productive, like laundry.**

**It is entirely Leroux-based and, without giving too much away, will be an exploration of Erik's paternal side. Those familiar with the fairy tale of The Little Match Girl will probably be able to guess where I'm going with it, though!**

**And now, without further ado…**

Chapter One

He thought of the Sokushinbutsu, certain monks in Japan who were able to mummify themselves by sheer force of will.

It was during his time in Russia that he had first heard the stories. They travelled, as most stories did in those days, from mouth to mouth, along the Silk Road and up through the wagon trails of Samarkand, told by traders on their way to the great fair at Nizhny Novgorod.

They were nothing more than rumours, but Erik had been fascinated, and over the years he had collected every fragment, every scrap of information that could help him understand how such an extraordinary feat might be achieved. He had discovered that the process took several years. After the monk had decided to pay the ultimate price in his quest for enlightenment, he would spend one thousand days eating only nuts and seeds, taking part in a regimen of physical activity that stripped him of his body fat. For another thousand days he limited his diet further still, consuming bark, and drinking tea made from a tree-sap which rendered his body poisonous to the maggots that were responsible for the decay of human flesh. Finally, the monk would place himself within a stone tomb, with only a small bell for company. He would ring the bell at a particular time each day to let the other monks know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tomb was sealed for another thousand days, after which time the other monks would open the tomb to see if their brother had achieved his macabre goal.

He thought of these things as a distraction from the leitmotif that plagued his thoughts every day, from the moment he opened his eyes to the moment that sleep claimed him once more.

He was not dead.

He was not dead.

The fact was simple, unalterable, and it caused Erik to feel a great deal of anger at a time when he should have been ridding his mind of trivialities such as emotions. How was it that his wasted body, which in all other respects resembled that of a corpse, continued to cling so perversely to life? He had given it no encouragement! His anger increased with every beat of the spiteful organ within his chest. Laid in the narrow coffin where he had spent the greater part of the last five months, he listened to its indolent, indomitable rhythm, determined to win the battle of wills.

He knew there were other ways of achieving the desired outcome. There were poisons, for instance, that would stop the incessant beat of his heart like a clock. Hanging would have the same effect, and drowning, but he was too proud to resort to subterfuge. It should be enough that he willed it to happen!

Commanding himself to death, however, was proving more difficult in practice than it had seemed in theory.

He did not even know why he continued with such an embarrassing charade. It had been almost six months since the daroga had placed notice of his death in L'Epoque, and still Christine had not returned to bury his body, as she had most tearfully promised. False and fickle girl! Erik had made it so easy, even digging his own grave at the base of the Communard's tunnel so that she would be spared the trouble of rowing across the lake. He dug it close to the spring where she had fainted after their first encounter. How greedily he preserved the memory of her little head resting in his lap, and the exquisite softness of her hair, which he had even dared to stroke – ever so gently – with the tips of his abnormally long fingers.

For an entire month he had lain in that damp hole waiting for her to come and weep over his skeletal remains. At first he had thought of nothing but death, since it would have been very awkward if she had returned to find his corpse still animated, but when both death and the maiden had failed to materialise he had relocated his poor bones to the coffin in which he presently slept.

The only thing that he had gained from his time in the grave had been a bad cold. Unfortunately, he had made a full recovery.

Damn his constitution!

He placated himself with the notion that Christine had truly wanted to come, but had been prevented from doing so by her whelp of a fiancé. No doubt the boy had married her within seconds of their escape from his lair. Of course she would have come if it had been her own choice; she was such a dear, sweet girl…

This fantasy would sustain him for a short time before darkness regained the upper hand, and he believed her capable for all manner of treacheries which he quickly admonished himself for thinking. Poor Christine! How could he blame her for wishing to avoid the sight of his decomposing corpse? He could not blame her for that, although he could not imagine it being any more hideous than the sight of his_ living_ corpse, upon whose forehead she had bestowed the only kiss that he had ever received. Even his own mother could not bring herself to do such a thing. And it had been so kind of Christine to kiss him without betraying her disgust.

The soft chimes of the drawing room clock interrupted his thoughts, and he found himself counting the hours out of habit.

Ten, eleven…

Twelve.

A perfect hour for the dead to rise.

He curled his fingers around the sides of the coffin and hoisted himself into a sitting position, ignoring the creak of his ageing and malnourished bones as he clambered down onto the floor. He viewed his surroundings with the same ambivalence as he viewed his physical condition, which is to say that he did not spare them a second glance as he lit a candle and moved through the rooms.

In the drawing room he set the candle down on top of his pianoforte and glanced at the mantelpiece clock. It was time. He turned his attention to the opposite wall, which was crowded with picture frames of various sizes. A painting of a Persian tower concealed the mechanism that controlled his torture chamber. He worked the mechanism, and a deep rumble sounded from beneath the floor as a pivot turned, replacing the mirrored room with a spiral staircase that led up to a seemingly impenetrable stone wall. Another deft touch and the stones slid away to reveal an ordinary store room in the cellars of the opera house.

It was one of many secret doors and passageways that Erik used to move about the building. The entrance was hidden by an old backcloth from La Roi de Lahore, affording him cover in case someone happened to be in the room. This was very unlikely. The room was said to be haunted by the ghost of Joseph Buquet, the scene shifter, who had been found hanged behind the backcloth several months before.

Erik was fairly certain that only one person, besides himself, dared enter the room now, and she was not scheduled to return until tomorrow.

Despite this he emerged cautiously, peering into every corner. There was no need for a lantern. A dull, reddish glow emanated through the warped floorboards from the furnace room below, casting its gloomy light over a graveyard of retired props. Erik's gaze travelled over the wooden crates and racks of moth-eaten costumes, into every nook and cranny, before settling upon the door with such intensity that it seemed like he could see through it into the corridor beyond.

Finally, satisfied that he was the only thing lurking in the shadows, Erik moved quickly to a nearby crate and removed its lid. Resting on top was an assortment of hats was a small wicker basket.

He swung it over one arm, shut the crate, and was back in his drawing room before so much as a spider had time to notice his presence.

The arrangement had existed for several months now. Performances took place at the Opéra on four nights of the week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Madame Giry delivered her basket of provisions after the performance on Wednesday evening. He collected the basket on Thursday, leaving payment for her to collect on Friday. On Sunday, Erik would leave a list of his requirements for the week ahead. Madame Giry would collect the list after the performance on Monday evening, so that she could go to the market on Tuesday, ready to complete the cycle on Wednesday.

He had even modified the drawing room clock to keep account of the days and months as well as the hours, so that he might never cross paths with Madame Giry by accident - or anyone else, for that matter.

One could not be too careful these days.

Sweeping away the carpet of cobwebs and shrivelled petals from the surface of his pianoforte, Erik put the basket down, and removed a pencil stub from his breast pocket. He smoothed out a copy of the most recent list he had left for Madame Giry and began unpacking the basket's contents methodically, crossing out each item as he went along. There was bread and blue cheese to compliment his collection of fine wines, a small bottle of red ink, three hoggets of merino wool, five glass eyes in varying shades of blue, and a packet of modelling wax. He paused when he came to the final item on the list, and frowned.

Figs.

Erik was very fond of figs. It would not have been an exaggeration to say that a perfectly ripe fig was his sole remaining pleasure in life. This made Madame Giry's recent habit of forgetting to buy them as unfortunate as it was baffling, as he felt that his instructions on the matter had been exceptionally clear. He very much hoped that tonight would mark a return to form.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled the final item out of the basket; a brown paper bag that should, in theory, have contained no less than seven figs. But instead of their smooth and slightly pliant flesh, his fingers closed around a small oblong box.

He pulled out the matches and stared at them in consternation.

This was the third time she had presented him with such an offering. Had the wretched woman forgotten how to read? He had clearly stated that he required seven figs, not another box of matches. He had enough of those to burn down the entire quartier! He had even considered that the word 'fig' might be the name of some new brand of matches, and had taken great pains to emphasise that he was referring to the flowering plant of the genus known as ficus, which he thought would have made further confusion impossible for anyone with at least half a brain – and yet she continued to wilfully misinterpret his demands.

Well, he would have no more of it!

Snatching up the bottle of red ink, Erik stalked into the library, seated himself at the bureau, and penned the woman a stern missive.

_Madame,_

_Please find enclosed the twenty seven francs that are owed to you in payment for last week's provisions, in addition to the usual compensation for your trouble._

_You will note that I have not included the two francs due in respect of the figs which you have again neglected to purchase, despite the polite reminder in my last letter._

_Please ensure that this oversight is not repeated._

_O.G._

When the letter was complete he thrust it into the empty basket, which he carried upstairs and threw into the crate with far more force than was necessary.

Afterwards, he wanted to leave the opera house. He wanted to go to her pathetic little apartment and set fire to it. He wanted her to see exactly what happened when he had matches to spare.

But Erik did none of these things.

Instead, he returned to the library and sank into a chair by the fire, releasing his anger in a slow, controlled breath.

It felt like decades since he had worked himself into such a fury. The effort was exhausting, and whatever the reason for their breakdown in communication, a surfeit of matches hardly excused his temper. He was, after all, preparing himself for eternity. What use were figs? They only showed his attachment to things which should have no meaning now, to the ephemera of life.

His gaze fell on a small brass samovar that sat upon the mantelpiece. It was a souvenir of his time in Russia, although his thoughts now returned to Japan, and more specifically to the Sokushinbutsu.

If memory served, their poisonous tea was made from the sap of the urushi tree. It was a curious substance, more commonly used in the production of the small lacquered boxes, inlaid with mother of pearl, so popular in France since the trade embargo had been lifted. No doubt the pure sap would be impossible to procure at the city markets, but if he were to get his hands on one of those lacquered boxes, he was confident that he could extract it, should he so desire, and put the samovar to something more than ornamental use.

He considered the matter as tiredness began to cloud his thoughts. In pursuit of their goal, the Sokushinbutsu starved themselves to become living corpses, a state that Erik had already attained, and just as they sealed themselves into their tombs, so had Erik begun the process of destroying the secret entrances to his underground lair. Garnier's mausoleum, the papers had called it. A pleasing coincidence.

And it would solve the problem of the figs, for if he was to have any hope of achieving his goal then he would have to suppress such appetites, detach from worldly desires, and become an empty vessel.

He closed his eyes, and slept.

* * *

In dreams he travelled as the traders had done, along the Silk Road and up through the wagon trails of Samarkand, across the landscape of his past. Sometimes it seemed that he was flying, skimming the desert sands and poppy fields before soaring above the walls of the palace at Mazanderan, where he plunged into the mouth of the human-headed bull that crowned the battlements, down into the palace itself, down through pleasure gardens and throne rooms, down into the Shah's magnificent Hall of Mirrors, where he saw a figure in a richly bejewelled mask reflected ten thousand times and more.

Sometimes he travelled further still, to a chateau in the forest clad with creeping briars. He wandered through rooms that were frozen in time, furnished with gilt furniture and clavichords, as if the aristocrats who once lived there had gone for a ride in a carriage, not a tumbrel. He wandered through the orangery and across the lawns, down to the banks of the river, whose wending way he followed through the forest, back to the Paris of his childhood.

It was many years before he returned, arriving at the height of a sultry and unpleasant summer.

He remembered those days. Haussmann's renovations were in full force, creating dust and havoc as they bulldozed labyrinths of medieval streets to make way for the new boulevards. The unrelenting humidity meant that the dust, instead of clearing, was trapped in a stifling cloud that hung over the city like a bruise for weeks on end, choking the lungs of its inhabitants. To make matters worse the Exposition Universelle had set up camp on the Champ de Mars, and the population was swollen with tourists who flocked to see the spectacles, gawping at Japanese prints, marble statues, hydrochrometers and break mechanisms; who came to marvel at demonstrations of the uses of petroleum oil, or to enjoy balloon rides over the pavilion and gardens. Thousands of them — a glut of humanity.

How he hated the seething mass of bodies!

It was not just his unfortunate appearance which made Erik feel uncomfortable. He had good reason to be nervous of who might lurk among the crowds.

The Khanom had not forgiven his escape from Persia. Her agents had already made two attempts on his life; once in Verona and again in Konigsberg, and he knew that he would never be safe in Europe as long as she lived. He planned to cross the channel as soon as his business in Paris was complete and take a steamer from Liverpool to the Americas. He had no great desire to see the New World, but the Khanom had left him with no choice; she seemed to have eyes in every paving stone of the Old one.

The completion of his business left him in possession of several papers, amongst them plans for a new opera house that was under construction in the centre of the ninth arrondissement. Erik had dabbled in architecture during his time in Persia, and he looked over the plans with a keen professional interest.

As with all theatres, the area beneath the stage required exceptionally deep foundations; in the case of the new opera house they needed to be deep enough to accommodate no fewer than five mezzanine levels. The problems began almost immediately. Huge levels of groundwater were encountered, and the Place de l'Opéra soon resembled nothing more than a giant swamp. The architect devised a brilliant solution. Pumps were employed to allow the foundations to be sunk to the required depth, after which two walls were built, one within the other, so that when the water was allowed to flow back it was entirely contained by the huge cistern created by the inner wall.

It was the space between these walls that Erik was interested in. An ordinary architect might see nothing more than a coffer dam, but Erik did not look at the world with ordinary eyes. Instead of a coffer dam he saw the potential for a dwelling-place between the two walls. Not a palace by any standard, but one that would be quite sufficient for his needs. After all, it would not be the first time that he had worked his way into the fabric of a building –– although admittedly he had been much smaller upon his last attempt, and therefore more adept at navigating the crawlspace beneath the floorboards.

Undaunted, he set to work immediately. Along with the plans, Erik had inherited the role of chief contractor, and he used this power shrewdly, often working through the night to make clandestine alterations to the walls and fixtures. The architect, whom illness removed from the city, remained oblivious.

Three years later, when building works were suspended by the Great Siege, Erik continued to work in secret, bringing in furniture, and concealing the entrance to his home so cleverly that not even the Communards who occupied the building after the siege were aware of his presence.

He was quite confident that the Khanom would not come looking for him in the bowels of the earth!

In a few short months the Communards were brutally defeated, and work slowly resumed on the new opera house. Erik emerged from his hiding place soon afterwards. Despite the continued danger to his life, he knew that he could not withdraw entirely from the world. The isolation would surely drive him mad! And so he made further alterations. By the time of the inaugural performance the building was riddled with spy-holes and secret passageways, which allowed Erik to observe the Opera's daily business without being seen.

He did occasionally venture outside. One passageway led from the lake to the cellars of a derelict chemist's shop on the opposite side of the Rue Scribe. He purchased the building, and used it for his comings and goings whenever he had errands to run in the city. On such occasions he attempted to hide his disfigurement by wearing a false nose and moustache. Even then his skeletal frame and pallid skin drew startled gasps from passers-by, so Erik limited these excursions, preferring to stay within the confines of the opera house. His intimate knowledge of the building enabled him to pass from one location to another like a phantom. Emerging from trap doors and false walls, he would navigate the ropes and pulleys of the mezzanine, traverse the catwalks, and glide along the dimly lit corridor between the stage and the dressing room, where a revolving mirror concealed the entrance to the Communard's tunnel.

Although he took pains not to be seen, it was only a matter of time before someone caught a glimpse of him: a shadowy, faceless figure dressed in a black, who seemed to be able to vanish at will.

Rumours began to circulate that the building was haunted.

Soon, the dancers were wearing coral amulets to protect themselves from the evil eye, to which end a horseshoe was placed on a small table outside the administration block, where it was touched by almost everyone who entered the building. The more hysterical members of the corps de ballet blamed the ghost if so much as a powder puff went missing.

Erik was amused at first. It was not the first time he had been mistaken for a ghost, and he saw the usefulness of such a disguise. People expected ghosts to materialise from time to time. And the Khanom was not looking for a ghost.

It was a perfect solution.

A few carefully staged encounters ensured his notoriety. A glimpse of his unmasked face in a darkened corridor; a burning skull on the fifth mezzanine. Just enough to strike terror into the hearts of those who might otherwise grow too curious.

But haunting the opera house was hardly a full time occupation, and Erik soon grew bored of such parlour tricks. He began to take an interest in the day-to-day running of the opera house. Music had always been his passion, and in the absence of any other outlet for his talents, transforming the Opera into the finest musical institution in the world became an obsession. Soon, not a single note could be played in the opera house without the ghost hearing it. He seemed to be everywhere: at every performance, at every meeting, however secret. Indeed, he became so well acquainted with the sordid details of one director's private life that the poor man ceded to almost all his demands. It was in this manner that he managed to elicit a wage for his services as a kind of artistic consultant, even managing to acquire himself a box on the grand tier, complete with attendant!

Ten years passed. During that time, word reached him that the Khanom had died, but even then Erik did not emerge from his hiding place. He had grown used to the solitude. Still, the management of the opera house was no longer diverting for a man of his unusual talents, and he found himself looking for a new challenge.

Every September, a certain number of graduates from the nearby Conservatoire were engaged to inject fresh life into the chorus. Very few of these recruits had their contracts extended beyond the autumn season or even signed in the first place. This was usually due to Erik's interference, as he made a point of listening to every rehearsal, and would inform the directors if a singer or musician was not up to his discerning standards.

It was at one such rehearsal that Christine Daaé came to his attention.

A pale, sickly-looking creature, she displayed no obvious charm or talent, leaving Erik to wonder why she had been engaged in the first place. She was pretty enough, in a symmetrical sort of way, but there were many girls in the company whose looks were more striking. And as for her voice, it was so weak that he could barely distinguish it from the rest of the chorus.

He was not the only person to notice that something was amiss. A few weeks after the season had opened the chorus-master, Gabriel, ordered her to stay behind after the rest of the chorus had left their morning rehearsal.

Erik listened from behind a latticed wall as Gabriel accused the girl of not pulling her weight. His lecture concluded, he played a few runs on the piano, and instructed her to repeat them.

It was not a bad voice. Her command of pitch was very good, but her upper register was shrill, her middle range had no clarity, and her lungs were not strong enough to support the lower. More than anything else her voice lacked character. She trilled through the scales like a mindless automaton – pleasant enough, but soulless.

"If you continue to sing like that you will not be engaged for another season," Gabriel told her bluntly. "There are no excuses at the Opéra, and you cannot hide, even in the chorus. Do you understand?"

The girl blanched, and for a moment it looked like she might burst into tears, but she managed to compose herself.

"I understand, maestro … but if I may … my father used to give me lessons. You see, I'm not to being taught amongst so many people," she explained in a soft, timid voice. "I don't mean to say that I should be singled out, but if you could find time to give me perhaps a few lessons, I'm sure that I—"

"And where do you think I would find the time for that?" challenged Gabriel, infuriated by her suggestion. "You are not at the Conservatoire anymore, if indeed you ever were, judging by the state of your voice! If you are serious about your career, mademoiselle, then you should go out and find your own teacher, and pay for it out of your own wages like the other chorus girls. Now, get out of my sight!"

Six months ago Erik would have been inclined to agree, but he was in the market for an experiment, and the girl had potential. It would not take very much; the right encouragement, someone to correct the bad habits that had strayed into her technique.

Such things were elementary. Why, even he could teach her…

* * *

He woke to the chimes of the mantelpiece clock.

Surfacing from his dream he felt disorientated, like a traveller suddenly recalled from a faraway land. He blinked and looked around to find that himself in the familiar confines of his library.

The chimes ceased, and silence shrouded the room. At times like this Erik found it difficult to believe that he had travelled to the places he dreamed about. Such dreams were so vivid that it was possible to mistake them for real memories, when in reality they seemed more likely to have sprung from dusty volumes whose spines glinted at him from the bookshelves, their contents playing tricks on a mind weakened by solitude.

Perhaps there had been no Khanom, no rosy hours of Mazandaran. Perhaps the briar-choked chateau had grown out of the pages of a fairy tale, and perhaps the samovar had come from some Parisian flea market, and not the great fair at Nizhny Novgorod.

Perhaps Christine, too, was no more than a figment.

Shaking his head to expel the remnants of his dream, he rose and went into the drawing room, where he was unsurprised to find that over a day had passed since he had last visited the third cellar. Time slipped by so quickly down here, for all that he remained the same.

He peered at one of the clock's many dials. Friday. Madame Giry should have taken his letter by now, and he hastened upstairs to make sure of it.

He checked the basket several times over the next few days but no reply was forthcoming. Perhaps she was simply too busy, between her duties as concierge for that dreary building on the Rue de Provence, attending to her boxes at the Opera, and darning her daughter's costumes.

Perhaps.

A queer feeling rose in his chest as he remembered the tone of his letter. Erik should not have addressed her in such a disrespectful manner. God only knew that she deserved better, after everything he had put her through. He was still amazed she had agreed to deliver his provisions in the first place. She must have worked out by now that he did not possess the power to transform her daughter into an empress, as he had claimed in order to procure her services when she was first employed at the Opera; that mendacity aside, the directors had already accused her of being his accomplice in the small matter of him blackmailing them out of twenty thousand francs a month, which was quite true, although she had not been aware that he was using her to facilitate his criminal transactions.

That feeling again, gnawing at his sternum.

Guilt.

Hoping to avoid the unwanted intrusion of his conscience, Erik set off in the direction of his bedchamber.

It was time to visit his lady.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read this story so far, and especially NotAGhost3 for your kind review. I know it's only been a few hours but I wanted to post Chapter 2 to remove it from the temptation of my overzealous inner editor! I won't always be so quick to update – my aim is to post a chapter a week, depending on how much time I get.**

**Warnings for more explicit references to suicide and squickiness involving wax manikins. Poor Erik. His brain really is a box of frogs…**

**Chapter Two**

As always, she was waiting for him.

His other Christine.

His other Christine did not faint at the sight of his face or shrink from his touch. Indeed, he could even take her into his arms and she would remain smiling and compliant – not that he would ever take such liberties! No, his other Christine would be accorded the same respect as her human counterpart.

Oh, but Erik had been neglecting her lately! A mouse had taken advantage of his absence by nesting within the honey-coloured silk of her wig; closer inspection revealed that the same rodent had also nibbled away her left earlobe. Erik loosened a soft moan of despair at this discovery. Removing the head and cradling it like the most delicate of ornaments, he brought it to his work table to get a better look at the damage, tilting it gently beneath the gas lamp until he was satisfied that the damage was confined to the left ear. Her pretty nose had not been eaten!

Allowing himself to breath, he placed the head upon its pillow and went to fetch the items that Madame Giry lately procured for him. The merino hoggets were supposed to augment the swell of her breasts, and it was with trembling hands that he set them aside for the time being. The eyes he would need presently. First, though, he would need the wax in order to repair her damaged earlobe.

He opened the packet and broke a piece off, softening it between his fingers before he set to work. Hunched over the small table he shaped a new earlobe quickly and carefully; speed was important as he needed the wax to remain pliable without becoming elastic. Once it was attached, he drew back slightly to admire his handiwork. To the untrained eye the effect was quite impressive. In fact, one might go so far as to call it worthy of a place in Madame Tussaud's esteemed collection.

Oddly enough it had been Christine herself – the real Christine – who had given Erik the idea of making a waxwork. On the terrible night when he had attempted to force her into marriage she had naively likened the interior of his torture chamber to a display at the Musée Grévin, the city's newly opened wax museum. In the weeks that followed her departure, Erik had remembered this comment, and a plan had formed.

Of course it was not as good as the real thing, but it kept him company.

For a moment he entertained himself with the notion of finding employment in the studios of Grévin or Tussaud. His mask would not bother anyone there! He could even make a new one out of wax, and present himself as both artist and model – a walking advertisement! A little bubble of glee rose in his chest at such a thought, and he felt almost like his old self.

But his giddiness was short-lived. His other Christine might be up to Madame Tussaud's standards, but she hardly satisfied his own. The eyes, for example, were not exactly true to life. Christine's eyes had been the deep, pellucid blue of the great Norwegian lakes that one saw in paintings. The present ones were far too pale and insipid-looking. Reaching up through her neck and into the hollow of her skull, he plucked the offending eyes from their sockets and considered the selection that Madame Giry had brought him. China-blue, azure, lapis lazuli, and the purple-tinged blue of forget-me-nots. None of these were quite right. The last pair looked promising, though. He fixed them in place and saw that they were good.

Ignoring the feeling of dissatisfaction that still lingered, he rose to his feet and carried the head back to its body. It was only after he had fixed it in place and taken a step back to consider the full affect that his smile faded and despair flooded the cavern of his chest.

He had as much hope as the Danaides of succeeding in his task. It was Christine's spirit, not her beauty, which had captured his heart. How could he ever hope to recreate that? Oh, he could create the illusion of life, just as Madame Tussaud had done when she created a model of the Comtess du Barry. Sleeping Beauty, they called her, reclining on a chaise longue. While the real Comtess du Barry had lost her head during the Terror and lay dismembered, like so many others, beneath the soil in the Madeleine cemetery, her effigy in London remained intact and seemingly immortal, thanks to a mechanism that made her chest rise and fall in artificial slumber. By candlelight the illusion was said to be eerily convincing. Perhaps he could invent a similar mechanism, but even if he did, his other Christine would never be anything more than a charming automaton.

Reaching out, he traced the contours of her face with his long musician's fingers. Her waxen skin felt like that of a newly embalmed corpse. At any other time he would have found the irony darkly amusing, but now it filled the cavern of his chest with a terrible, aching loneliness.

_Oh, Christine…_

He had never intended to fall in love with the girl. How could he? Love was for ordinary people, with ordinary faces, who lived in ordinary houses made of ordinary bricks. He was a mountebank living in a house with a false bottom. He did not even have a face!

At first he saw her as little more than a broken instrument. A project, to relieve his boredom. He would take a passable, uninspired voice and transform it into something magnificent, just as many years ago, when he had taken apart a clavichord in his father's chateau and put it back together again, hoping to improve its discordant sound.

If he was being entirely honest it was more than that. In the solitude of his lair he had begun to work on his own composition, and he harboured a growing ambition to see his creation realised upon Garnier's stage. Christine's voice would serve as a perfect conduit for his talents: a means of achieving the fame that his face denied him.

And when she had the world at her feet, she would announce a great concert dedicated to her maestro's work…

Her feelings were of no consequence. She was merely an instrument that he could easily replace if it played the wrong notes. Sopranos were hardly in short supply and besides, she did not even want to be there. He could well imagine her retiring to some nunnery to live out her days in an endless litany of prayers for her wretched father, whose death he learnt was to blame for her listlessness. He might have chosen any one of her fellow chorus members. Christine had simply come to his attention first, and her childish belief in the Angel of Music afforded him a useful identity through which to communicate without having to reveal his true face. After convincing her that he had come down from heaven to enable her to discover the supreme joys of eternal art, he began to give her lessons in her dressing room each morning, speaking to her through the two-way mirror that concealed the entrance to the Communard's tunnel.

For several weeks he felt nothing but a vague contempt for her gullibility. But as their lessons progressed he began to find that childlike trust strangely affecting, and her eyes upon the glass, so full of esteem and affection, ignited something wonderful within his chest.

Of course, it did not last. A few months later she confided that she had seen her childhood sweetheart, the Vicomte de Chagny, watching from his family box. The rush of jealousy he felt upon hearing this had been suffocating. Terrified of what such a reaction must mean, he had tried to end their lessons, but Christine had renounced the boy and assured him that her heart belonged to him alone! Even after she had discovered that he was not the Angel and had seen his true face she insisted that she was in love with him. She burned his mask, and said that she would marry him in the Madeleine church, that they would live in an ordinary house made of ordinary bricks and play cards and go for walks on Sundays - _Kyrie! Kyrie! Kyrie eleison!_

He paused, and looked doubtfully at his other Christine.

Had she really said those things?

Perhaps he had only imagined them. He wanted to fall to his knees and beg her forgiveness, but even he recognised the futility of such a gesture. The one who deserved his prostrations was gone now, and he hoped very much that the Vicomte was helping her to forget what had happened here, in the house by the lake.

Yes, he remembered now…

In truth the poor girl had been petrified. Not of his face, in the end, but of something much worse. The true deformity was internal. His face merely warned of the monster within, the monster that was unleashed when he discovered that Christine did not really love him, that she was so terrified of his affections that she planned to elope with the Vicomte, to whom she was secretly engaged. He had flown into a murderous rage. Desperate not to lose Christine, he had taken her prisoner and presented her with a terrible ultimatum: marry him, or he would blow up the entire opera house with everyone in it, including her precious fiancé, whom he had managed to trap in his torture chamber.

Being a good girl, Christine had agreed. She would have agreed to anything to save her boy.

Of course Erik had not expected a real marriage. Tragic heroines were inclined to kill themselves on their wedding nights, and Christine had already demonstrated her intentions by spending a good part of the evening attempting to beat her own brains out against a certain corner of her bedroom wall. He was content with this. At least be together in death. It was only when she had offered to become his _living_ wife that Erik had realised the full horror of what he had been about to do. Taking advantage of this rare moment of sanity, he had released the Vicomte from the torture chamber, and allowed the young lovers to leave his lair.

She had kissed him then, chastely, and left him with the promise that she would return to bury his remains when the time came.

Such events weighed heavily upon his conscience. Twisting his hands together, he turned from his other Christine and maundered through the empty rooms like a sleepwalker, barely conscious of his surroundings until he came to the drawing room. He knew that he was beginning to lose time. It was hard to measure down here, even with the aid of his mantelpiece clock.

He paused in front of it, listening to the way it ticked in tandem with his heart. They bent to the same rhythm now. Sometimes he felt as though it was the only thing keeping him alive.

If he were to stop his faithful windings…

He could not bear the isolation any longer. Six months had passed since he had last ventured from his lair, unless one counted a single trip to the Rue de Provence to convince Madame Giry to resume her position, and even then he had not spoken to the woman. He had not spoken to anybody. Six months could have been six years, six decades. Days passed in the space of a short nap and he found himself checking the clock repeatedly, unable to fix the passage of time in his mind, taking absurd pleasure in his nocturnal forays into the third cellar, where Madame Giry's basket provided him with proof that the world still turned.

And now, as his gaze slid from the mantelpiece into the fire's grey embers, he came to a disturbing realisation. He was quite certain that if Christine were to return to keep her promise and find him still alive, he would not be able to let her go a second time.

That must not be allowed to happen.

But how could he prevent it?

A thought unfurled at the back of his mind. It was not a new thought. In fact, it was one that he had examined and discarded many times during the six months of his confinement.

He returned to the bureau in the library, where his Punjab lasso lay in a small and dusty drawer. It had lain unused for many months, but he removed it now and drew it speculatively through his fingers. It did not look particularly deadly. A simple length of catgut, of the kind one used to string a lute or a violin; but this one had claimed many lives since it had first been put to use in an enclosed courtyard of the Khanom's palace. That first murder had been committed in self-defence. As for the others… He could not remember how many poor wretches the Khanom had asked him to dispatch. It seemed like hundreds, now that he felt their weight upon his chest.

And the killings had not just been on the Khanom's orders. There was Joseph Buquet to consider, and the Comte de Chagny.

And his father…

Shuddering at the memory, he carried the lasso back into his bedchamber, coming to a halt in front of his other Christine. She watched in mute anticipation as his gaze rose to the ceiling. A beam could be fixed there with no great difficulty. He glanced down at his other Christine, anxious for her approval. Her lips were curved into a slight, conspiratorial smile, as if she had guessed his thoughts and given her consent to the plan that was forming in his mind.

It seemed fitting that he should use the Punjab lasso. There was a sort of poetic justice to the idea of dispatching himself with the very weapon he had used on so many of his victims, and in doing so he would protect Christine from the possibility of suffering any further harm at his hands.

He smiled, gazing into the depths of her vacant blue eyes.

Soon they would be together for eternity.

* * *

The next few days were entirely devoted to preparation. It had to be done properly, for Erik had always been a stickler for etiquette, especially where suicide was concerned.

There was the manikin to consider. His other Christine must look her best.

Now that her face was complete, he turned his attention to the rest of her body. He used the remainder of the wax to make her delicate hands and feet, shaping her fingernails from shards of pearl that had begun their lives as necklace beads. He had been forced to improvise with most of the materials. For instance, her torso and limbs were made of wood and metal butchered from his pipe organ, whose disgorged remains now lay in a far corner of the room. It had been a shame to destroy the organ, which had taken him many months to build, but at the same time he liked the idea of creating one instrument from the corpse of another.

Over this hard, unyielding skeleton he draped merino and linen; merino for the padding and linen stitched in such a way as to suggest the softness of the female form. He did not think it wise to concern himself with precise anatomical details. To do so might give rise to ungentlemanly emotions, and he must take care to always act like a gentleman where Christine was concerned, something he had not always done in the past.

It was difficult to remember this as he used the last of the merino to create the gentle swell of her breasts. His hands trembled, along with parts of his body that he preferred to forget existed. As soon as they were finished he draped his opera cloak about Christine's torso to protect her modesty.

Of course, she needed something grander to wear…

Erik had bought her several gowns during her time as his guest, but they were all hung neatly in wardrobe of her room. He could not bring himself to go in there. Only a husband had the right to enter a woman's room without first asking for permission. That left his mother's clothes. He had taken them out of Christine's wardrobe and put them in his own closet, as he had not wanted to arouse her curiosity. Christine really was most dreadfully curious.

He went into the closet and examined the gowns, which he quickly realised were entirely unsuitable. Christine might have been slender, but these gowns would have been snug on a girl of twelve. Had his mother really been so tiny? He remembered her being frail – almost birdlike – but she had always been in bed, shrouded in blankets and propped up by pillows, making her true proportions difficult to estimate. Besides, her clothes were too old-fashioned, their lace turned brittle with age.

Running his finger along one ivory sleeve, he suddenly had a marvellous idea.

He would make her a gown!

A wedding gown, more beautiful than any bride had ever worn! Yes… and when the time came, he would imagine that they were standing before the altar in the Madeleine church, about to exchange their vows.

There was no time to waste. He would need buttons, yards of silk, metres of taffeta. Ribbons – he must not forget ribbons! Pulling out all of his mother's clothes, he picked apart their seams, salvaging anything of use, which was very little. Most of the fabric was close to disintegrating. He would have to ask Madame Giry for assistance. Returning to the library, he pulled out a few pieces of paper and wrote down his requirements, which seemed enough to clean out an entire haberdashery. He knew that Madame Giry would not be able to afford such expensive items and so he placed several crisp hundred franc notes inside the envelope, which he took upstairs and placed inside the empty basket. It occurred to him that Madame Giry might become suspicious of the fact that his list did not contain his usual request for victuals, so he hurried back upstairs and added a few extra items in his almost illegible scrawl. Bread, cheese…

Figs.

He forced himself not to dwell on the business of the figs. If he were to die with any semblance of peace, he must think only of Christine, and remove his mind from all other earthly desires.

Time seemed to slow to an excruciating, glacial pace.

He filled it with further preparations for the wedding, eking out his limited resources as best he could. Deciding that he might as well put the matches to some use, he gathered up all the candles he could find and brought them into his bedchamber, along with the flowers that still retained their heads. They rustled as he set them in place. Suddenly realising what might happen if a candle were to set fire to the room _after_ the wedding, he hurried down to the Communard's dungeon and carried out a minute inspection of every crevice, until he was satisfied that every last grain of gunpowder had been washed away in the flood. It would somewhat defeat the object of protecting the world from his fiendishness if his death were to cause a deadly explosion.

By the final day everything was ready except for the wedding gown. He had arranged Christine's hair into what he considered to be the latest bridal fashion, and had even laid out a final aperitif on his work table; the bottle of Tokay he had opened for Christine on the first night they had dined together. He had told her that he had brought it personally from the cellars where Falstaff had dined. In reality he had stolen it from an unvigilant Communard, but he had never been one to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Soon, there was nothing left but to wait for Madame Giry to deliver her basket. The last day was the most excruciating, as Erik knew that the basket had been delivered, but he dare not venture into the third cellar until he was sure that everyone had left the opera house for the night. He must not grow careless at the last moment.

He took up refuge in the library, where he passed the time in reading from the seventh volume of _A Natural History of the World_, a weighty tome whose words passed through his mind without making much impression upon it.

Eventually he gave that up in favour of listening to the clock in the adjoining room. He closed his eyes, listening to the relentless ticks until he finally heard the tell-tale scrape that came before the chime.

Time to go…

He hastened upstairs and removed the lid from the hat crate. Alongside the usual packets of bread and cheese were several promising parcels wrapped up in tissue paper. He was surprised to see that Madame Giry had also written him a letter. Suddenly remembering that he was expecting one, he opened it, although in truth he no longer cared to hear her explanation regarding the missing figs.

_Monsieur le Fantome,_

_Please forgive my leaving out the figs and I am very much aggrieved to hear that I overlooked them. It is strange that I did because I recollect buying them very clearly but must have got my thoughts muddied if monsieur takes my meaning. I have been run ragged this week what with the tenants asking for all sorts and I can only think that I gave one of them your figs by accident. I very much hope that you can accept my most humblest assurances that it will not happen again. I have taken particular care over the figs this time and I hope that you will find them to your liking along with the rest of your order. I have enclosed the left over money although it was not very much as the price of silk has gone up so much as to say it is almost daylight robbery. _

_Yours respectfully,_

_Clementine Giry._

_PS. Little Meg does very well as the leader of the row and minds herself to keep respectable and ladylike although she is a silly girl in many ways. We are both very grateful for your kind words to the directors._

A lump rose in his throat as he read her clumsy words. It was him that should be apologising, not the other way around! And what did she mean by wittering on about her daughter's progress? He was not some maiden aunt anxiously following the career of his sister's prodigious spawn, unless—

Surely the old woman did not still believe that he possessed the power to make Little Meg an empress?

The idea was absurd, and her naivety plunged him to new low of wretchedness as he considered what further abuses she might have been willing to suffer in the delusional belief that he would repay her in such a way. Poor Madame Giry – Poor Clementine! How strange it felt to know her name after all these years. Somehow it made his betrayal seem even crueler, worse still when he noticed the familiar brown paper bag resting on top of his other provisions. She was too good to him! When the time came he would make sure that she was properly provided for – after so many years exhorting money from the Opera management he possessed more than enough to make sure that the old woman would never have to scrub another stairwell. She could retire to cottage in the country and live in comfort for the rest of her days. It was a poor apology, he realised, but the idea soothed his conscience slightly as he opened the bag and reached inside for the figs…

… and pulled out another box of matches!

Erik stared at the matchbox as it lay in the palm of his hand. He did not react with anger or surprise, but with complete and utter stillness, like a rabbit when it senses the hawk that hunts it.

Madame Giry had not done this.

Someone else knew that he was here.

A chill crept over him. Someone must have been going into the basket during the day that passed between Madame Giry putting it into the crate and him coming to collect it. His gaze swept around the cellar, peering anxiously into every corner, although he already knew there was no-one there now. He would have sensed them as soon as he stepped out from behind the backcloth. No, the culprit had fled without waiting to see the impact of his handiwork.

What devilment was going on here? This was the third week that the matches had appeared in the basket, so the culprit must have seen the correspondence between himself and Madame Giry. It followed from the contents of these letters that whoever it was must have known how close he was to realising that someone else was involved … and yet they had continued with their bizarre scheme.

But who were they, and what did they want from him?

Persia sprang to mind, but the Khanom was long dead, and the old daroga believed that Erik had followed in her footsteps – indeed, he had personally placed notice of his death in _L'Epoque_ so that Christine might know that it was time to fulfil her promise. And the matches … he could not fathom their significance. He might have been able to count murder and exhortation amongst his crimes, but he had never been guilty of arson. He thought back over his gruesome career and could not think of anyone, not even a slighted flame-thrower, for whom the matches could be a symbolic gesture.

Unless it was someone he did not know, a thrill-seeker bent on tracking down the famous opera ghost.

The chill in his veins hardened to ice. Never mind that he was actively preparing for death – he proposed to meet his maker on equal terms, not smoked out like a rat for someone else's amusement. He was no longer a sideshow freak! A cold and deadly rage began to overtake him. Instinctively, he reached into the pocket of his cloak, fingering the familiar coil of his Punjab lasso.

When they returned, he would be waiting…


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thank you very much to those who have reviewed this story so far. I can't tell you what it means to know you're enjoying it!**

**I have some small hatred for this next chapter (and feel better for saying so). It had been interfered with far too much for a first draft, and now it will have to do, as at this rate I won't be more than six chapters in by the time my maternity leave finishes…**

**Apologies in advance to Hans Christian Andersen. **

Chapter Three

She trudged down the Boulevard des Capucines in the pouring rain.

It was very late for such a little girl to be wandering the streets, but there was nobody around to notice, and even if there had been, they were unlikely to have expressed concern for a mere street urchin. The only person likely to pay attention was the local police inspector, who more than once had accused her of begging and had confiscated her matches. She carried a quantity of them in her ragged apron, and she had spent the last week trying to sell them on the streets of the ninth arrondissement.

In all that time she had not sold a single match.

Last night she had slept in the Tuileries Gardens. It was still a frightening experience to sleep in the open air, but she had liked her little nest beneath the rose bushes, where she could breathe in the fragrant air and listen to the strange chorus of frogs in the nearby pond. It had reminded her of a story her grandmother used to tell her, about a princess whose prized possession had been a golden ball. She used to go out into the forest and throw the ball oh-so-high, watching it glimmer in the sunlight before catching it again. And then one day it had fallen into a deep pond and had seemed to be lost forever, until a supremely ugly frog came to the rescue.

Of course, he had not really been a frog. The creatures in her grandmother's tales had rarely been what they appeared.

As she had drifted off to sleep she had imagined that _she_ was the princess. She had lived in a beautiful castle, with a fine feather bed to sleep in, and a vast dining hall of white marble. It had been in this hall that the old dowager queen had ordered sumptuous feast to be laid out in the frog's honour. And what a feast it had been! There had been glazed meats and savoury pastries and pies that looked like peacocks; but what she had loved best were the sweets, which had been so many and varied that it had made her teeth hurt just to look at them. Great castles of wobbling, jewel-coloured jelly, silver platters filled with macaroons, mille-feuille with sticky white icing, peach frangipanes, chocolate gateaux, blackcurrant sorbet, baked apples, glazed tarts, honeyed figs….

It seemed too real to be a dream, but although she had eaten her fill and retired to the comfort of a fine feather bed, when she awoke the next morning she had felt weak and ravenous with hunger.

A great storm cloud had gathered over Paris. Crawling out from beneath the rose bush, she had hurried in the direction of Les Halles, arriving at the market as the first patters of rain gave way to thunder. Soon, the rain was beating down on the glass roof of the great wrought iron structure with the force of a tropical storm. She had spent several hours weaving between the market stalls, which were laden with produce, forcing her way between the crowds of sweaty, humid bodies. Locals called it the belly of Paris because it sold everything a Parisian could ever want to eat. The most expensive dishes on the menus of the city's finest restaurants began their lives here, alongside the ingredients for the humblest stews.

The sight of so much food had made her feel slightly dizzy. It had been a week since her last proper meal and she had hoped to scrounge some leftovers, but the traders had been hot and irritable, and had swatted her away like a mosquito.

Eventually she had given up. Leaving the market, she had huddled beneath the portico of the nearby church of Saint-Eustache, where she had passed the time by sorting through her matches, discarding those dampened by the storm, and sorting the remainder into smaller bunches, which she had tied with bits of string, except for two bunches, which she had slid into a branded matchbox she had found on the pavement.

It had grown dark, and the bell had tolled for evening prayers. She had rolled the matches up in her apron and set off in the direction of the Opéra.

Walking through the rain had been refreshing at first, after weeks of relentless, scorching heat. It was not falling as heavily as before and she had imagined that she was Ondine flitting beneath a waterfall in the enchanted forest. But as the hours passed it had grown colder, and the rain seemed to penetrate her ragged clothes, soaking into her skin and bones, causing her to shiver uncontrollably. By the time she reached the Boulevard des Capucines her bare feet had turned purple with cold.

Of course, she had been wearing slippers when she had left home, but they had belonged to her grandmother and were far too big. They had fallen off her feet yesterday evening as she ran across the street, trying to avoid two carriages as they clattered past at a fearsome speed. One of them had been thrown up by a wheel and tossed out of sight, and the other had been found by an older boy. She had tried to snatch it back, but he was stronger than her, and had run off laughing, saying that it would make a fine cradle for his own children one day.

Hugging her matches closer to her chest, she tried to distract herself by imagining that she was already in the warm cellar of the opera house, lifting up the crate lid, and pulling a bag full of figs out of the secret basket.

There was a knack to eating them. Closing her eyes, she imagined pushing her thumbs through the tough skin to reveal the seedy pink flesh of the fruit, which she devoured in three bites, the juices running down her chin as she reached for another, and another, and another…

It was past midnight when she finally arrived at the Place de l'Opéra. Across the square, the steps of the opera house were thronged with people hurrying down to waiting carriages. She watched them from the shelter of a distant doorway. The women were beautiful; wrapped in furs, their diamonds glittering beneath the street lamps as they descended on the arms of gentlemen with smart umbrellas and sombre-coloured coats. She did not know exactly what happened inside but she thought it must be a ball of some kind, because the building was called a palace and they always left at midnight, although she had never caught of glimpse Cinderella hurrying down the steps in her glass slippers.

Her gaze travelled above their heads, admiring the building's ornate facade and the golden figures that crowned its domed roof. The central figure was like an angel, holding aloft a mysterious, stringed instrument.

When the last carriage had trundled safely out of sight she ran across the square, heading for the street that ran alongside the opera house. About halfway along this street was a basement window. The window pane was missing, and although the gap was very narrow she had squeezed through it several times before. She knelt on the wet pavement and tied the strings of her apron to make a tight parcel. Then, after glancing up and down the street to make absolutely sure that no-one was watching, she pushed the parcel through the window and followed it feet first. Her toes scrambled for purchase as she edged her torso, shoulders, and finally her head through the gap, clinging the casement by her fingertips. But they were still numb with cold, and she lost her grip a few seconds later, falling to the floor with a painful clatter.

She sprang to her feet and looked around. There was nobody there. A street lamp illuminated the contents of the small storeroom, filled with crates and metal poles, which she had come to know so well in the month that had passed since she had first discovered the missing window pane. It had been the end of a fruitless evening spent trailing from one theatre to the next, trying to sell her matches to the subscribers as they came and went. She might have spent the rest of the night sleeping in the storeroom, but she was curious to see more of the building that attracted so many fine ladies and gentlemen.

As she had done on that first night, she crept over to the door and opened it a crack, peering into the corridor beyond like a mouse nosing out of its hole. It was deserted. She squeezed through the crack and scurried down the corridor until she reached a dingy stairwell, where she paused and listened very carefully. There were voices nearby. It was difficult to tell if they were coming from above or below because the bare stone walls created a confusing echo. She cocked an ear to one side. It sounded like the voices were coming from above, but it was impossible to be certain.

After a few minutes they grew quieter. Above or below, they were getting further away.

Hesitantly, she began to make her way downstairs. From her previous excursions she knew that at the bottom of each flight of steps was a door leading to another corridor, more or less identical to the one above. She counted three flights of steps before she approached one of these doors, but as she reached it the handle turned and it was opened from the other side.

She ducked behind the door as a woman in black taffeta bustled through. Luckily, the woman did not look back as she began to climb the stairs. Holding her breath, she watched as the swishing hem of the woman's gown disappeared upstairs, her heart beating so violently that it seemed to drum against the wall she had pressed herself against.

Finally, the woman's footsteps receded, and she heard the sound of a door being opened and closed several flights above.

She let out a relieved breath and stepped away from the wall. After listening for a few more moments, she turned and stepped into the corridor from which the woman had just emerged.

It was long and narrow and lit by little wall-mounted gas jets. Several of them were broken, giving the corridor a slightly ghoulish appearance, like the dungeon of a haunted castle. Her imagination transformed the doors that ran along one side of the corridor into cells, her stomach knotting with fear as it populated them with all manner of sinister, child-eating creatures. She did not want to go any further. She wanted to run back to the safety of the storeroom, but her growling stomach reminded her of the feast that waited just metres away, and that gave her courage.

She took a deep breath and ran to the fourth door. Its handle turned easily, the well-oiled hinges admitting her without so much as a squeak as she slipped into the room beyond.

A warm breeze gusted between her toes and she glanced down out of habit. The floorboards were warped and cracked and in places she could see right through them into the room beyond, which was filled with a dull red light. It was like peering through the bars of a stove. She did not know what they kept down there but she was grateful for the borrowed light, which meant that the room in which she now stood was not completely dark, although it was not bright enough for her to make out her surroundings in any detail.

She groped about until she found the little lantern and matchbox that was kept next to the door. Taking one of the matches, she struck it against the side of the box and held it to the lantern's wick, feeling herself relax as the room was filled with a warm, golden light.

She raised it high above her head and took a few steps forward.

It was like stepping into one of her grandmother's stories. A gingerbread cottage stood a few metres away, with a chocolate-coloured chimney and curtains that looked as if they had been spun from sugar. Next to the gingerbread cottage rose the turret of a castle, with its furniture arranged nearby, comprising a somewhat dusty suit of armour, a standard attached to a wooden pole, and a magnificent throne. Of course, it was only make believe. The throne was really made of wood painted to look like gold, and the gingerbread house was only a facade, its door leading to a brick wall instead of a witch's kitchen. But it did not matter. She could imagine what the door led to, as vividly as she had imagined that the rose bush in the Tuileries Gardens had been a fine feather bed.

Her gaze landed on a crate in the far corner of the room, and she ran over to it, grinning with anticipation.

She had discovered its secret entirely by accident the first time she had ventured through the basement window. Searching for the grandeur of a ballroom or perhaps a great dining hall of white marble, she had instead found her way into the cellars, where she had almost been apprehended by a security guard. Searching frantically for somewhere to hide, she had begun opening the lids of various crates, thinking that she could curl up inside one of them. Instead, she had found a basket filled with food. The smell had almost stupefied her. Forgetting about the security guard, her gaze had roved hungrily over fresh bread and blue cheese and scallions. There had been other things inside the basket, such as wool and ink, but it was the discovery of a bag filled with seven ripe figs that had given her the most delight.

Reaching the crate, she threw back the lid… only to find that the basket was empty.

For several long minutes she stared into the dark space where the figs should have been. She did not understand. Of course, it was not the first time she had found the basket empty; sometimes the basket was not there at all. But today was Wednesday. The figs were _always _there on Wednesday.

A lump swelled painfully at the back of her throat, and her eyes filled with useless tears at the prospect of another night without food.

Fisting them away, she lifted the lantern a little higher and peered into the bottom of the basket. Before she had realised that the figs were replenished every Wednesday, she had checked the basket several times a week, and sometimes she had found letters in the bottom of it, although she could not read them.

There was no letter, but there was a matchbox. The same matchbox that she had left in place of the figs the week before. Frowning, she reached inside and picked it up, noticing that it felt heavier than it should have done.

Suddenly, she felt a tingle of unease at the nape of her neck, as though a door had opened, allowing a breeze to ghost through the room. She looked over her shoulder. The door was closed, and the room seemed empty, although it did not _feel _empty.

It felt as though someone was watching her.

Feeling her pulse begin to quicken, she forced herself to look more closely, her gaze travelling warily into every shadowed corner, until it came to rest upon a cloth that covered the far wall. It was painted a dusty lilac to represent the night sky, spangled with little glass stars. The bottom half of the cloth was filled with the silhouettes of strange, domed buildings, and standing in front of it was the wooden facade of another building, adorned with colourful tiles.

The surface of the cloth rippled slightly, as if in a slight breeze, and she swallowed, telling herself that it was just her imagination.

It was not the first time that she had felt like somebody was watching. An angel looking over her shoulder, she thought. It was something her grandmother used to say. Whenever we are doing something we ought not to do, we feel an angel peering over our shoulder, letting us know that what we are doing is wrong. Maybe she felt it now because she shouldn't have been stealing the figs.

But she wasn't stealing them. She always left something in return. Confused, she looked down at the matchbox, and gave its contents an experimental shake. They certainly didn't sound like matches.

She slid open the draw and looked inside.

* * *

She emerged the next morning to find the city transformed. Pale, brilliant sunshine had replaced the bruising clouds, and the stale heat of summer had been washed away by the rain. It felt cold and fresh, as if the city had shed a stifling overcoat, exposing its shoulders to the crisp autumn air.

Bright-eyed and smiling, she hitched a ride on the back of a carriage that was heading toward Les Halles, jumping off when it changed direction and walking the rest of the way back to the market with a spring in her step.

It was not just the weather that had changed. So had her luck. In the baker's hall, surly old Danton, who usually threatened to box her ears as soon as he set eyes on her, threw her a stale brown roll to feast upon, and one of the old countrywomen who sold their vegetables outside the market gave her a couple of carrots, which were small and shrivelled, but she was too happy to care as she wandered through the great mountains of cauliflowers and cabbages that were arranged upon the surrounding pavements.

In the end, she spent much of the day on the riverfront, to which the bracing weather had drawn a multitude of whiskery old gentlemen, who liked nothing better than to sit in the cafes, watching the world go by as they smoked their pipes. Careful to avoid the glares of the waiters, she travelled from table to table, gentleman to gentleman, a bundle of matches in one raised hand.

By late afternoon, she had sold enough of them to finally return home.

It was not far from the market to the dingy little court where she lived with her father. A year ago the ground floor had belonged to an old wheelwright, but he had been carried off by the same illness that had taken her grandmother, and his workshop was now derelict. The once neatly swept courtyard, where she had taken her first tottering steps under the wheelwright's watchful gaze, had grown cluttered with broken cart wheels and piles of refuse from the markets; as she picked through the foul-smelling gloom she wrinkled her nose at the stench of rotting vegetables and the gluey residue of snails underfoot. A dozen tramps were asleep in a huddle against the far wall. Careful not to disturb them, she crept upstairs and along the wooden gallery, where a further staircase, so narrow that her shoulders brushed the walls, led up to the garret door. She opened it as quietly as possible and stepped inside.

Loud snores reverberated from her father's room. She had expected this. When he was out of work, which was most of the time, her father spent his days sleeping and his nights getting drunk in the local cafes.

Closing the door, she placed her earnings on the table, and used one of her remaining matches to light the lamps.

It was a sparse, depressing little apartment, consisting of two small rooms whose ceilings were open to the rafters, which leaked in bad weather, leading to a continual smell of damp. When her grandmother had been living it had seemed different. Small, but cheerful, with flowers in the window and a pot always bubbling on the stove. She had been born here, spending the first six years of her life in her grandmother's care, accompanying her to market and church; but as the old woman had grown frailer they had spent most of their time in the garret. It had been peaceful then, with her father away at sea. In the evenings she would curl up on her grandmother's knee and listen to stories. Perhaps that was why she felt the need to return to this place, despite the fact that her father had destroyed nearly every remnant of those happy times. Her grandmother's rocking chair, the dresser with its little ornaments; he had smashed them all to pieces to use as firewood. He had even burned the pictures that used to hang upon the walls, so that all that remained was a brass bed, a stove, and an old table.

Putting the last lamp upon the windowsill, she stood in the spot once occupied by the rocking chair. At least the view had not changed. From here, she could see across the rooftops to the lighted belfry of St Eustache, its clock face shining like a moon through the darkness. She loved the church. Before her grandmother had grown too weak to leave the garret they had attended mass there every Sunday, and afterwards they would light a candle for her mother's soul. She could not remember her mother, but her grandmother said that she had been very kind and beautiful, and that she had always wanted a little girl…

"She returns."

Startled, the match girl spun around. Her father was standing in the doorway.

"Thought you'd got yourself drowned in the river," he said. The words sounded thick and heavy. He tilted back his head and gave her a long, appraising look. "What's that you've got there?"

"Nothing—"

But it was too late. He had already seen the way her hands were bunched up in her apron pocket, and he lurched forward, grabbing her by the wrist and forcing her to reveal the matchbox she had instinctively tried to hide.

"Matches! Only matches!" she cried.

Suddenly he released her, and she sagged back in relief. She was unprepared for the blow that came a few seconds later, knocking her to the ground. Curling away, she squeezed her eyes shut and raised one arm to protect herself from the next blow…

Instead, she heard the scrape of coins being taken from the table, followed by the sound of them being pocketed as her father staggered from the room, slamming the door behind him. She listened to the muffled sound of his heavy steps descending the garret staircase, absently wondering how he managed to squeeze down them without his broad shoulders getting stuck.

Slowly, her heart stopped pounding. After several moments she rose unsteadily to her feet. Her jaw felt bruised and tender where he had hit her, but it did not matter. He had not looked inside the matchbox.

She picked up the lamp and went through into the bedroom, where she knelt beside the bed as if to say her prayers. One of the floorboards was loose. She worked her fingers around the edges, prising it away to reveal the small compartment where she kept her treasures. Perhaps they did not look like much, but to her they were the most precious items in the whole world. Amongst them was her grandmother's cap, edged with lace, and an ivory comb that had belonged to her mother. She ran her fingers over each of them in turn before she took out the matchbox, sliding open the drawer to reveal the new treasure that she had found in the cellars of the opera house.

A bluebird.

Not a real one, of course, but an ornament, exquisitely carved from blue glass, with little brass legs and what looked like diamonds for eyes. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. But who would leave her such a gift? The only person who had ever cared about her was in heaven now…

Her memory returned to the previous Christmas, when a soft blanket of snow had covered the deserted streets, making it seem like there was nobody left in the world beyond the inhabitants of the tiny garret, which was silent except the gentle wheeze of her grandmother's breath. She had looked so frail, her skin paper-thin and her pulse pattering weakly in the hollow of her neck. In those final days she would often grow confused, her mind drifting back to the farm in the country where she had been a girl, and in particular the fig tree that had grown in the orchard.

There was a knack to eating them, she had explained, her swollen, arthritic fingers wandering across the counterpane as if to demonstrate.

On the last night of the year her father had come. He had been drunk, and had said many cruel things which she had since tried to forget. Afterwards, she had climbed into the big brass bed and begged her grandmother not to leave. Her grandmother had replied that she must go, but she had promised that when she was in heaven she would send an angel to watch over her. But she must take care, because angels came in many guises, and she would need to look for the angel as the bible had said, through a glass darkly.

The words had made very little sense, but she had been comforted all the same, resting her head against her grandmother's thin shoulder as she had fallen asleep.

Now, as she looked down at the little glass bluebird, she began to have an inkling of their meaning.

It was as though her grandmother had led her to the basket, and now some mysterious person had left her a gift. It must be the angel she had promised to send! She stared at the bluebird, astonished by this realisation. After several long minutes she wrapped it carefully in her grandmother's cap and laid it beside her other treasures, before replacing the floorboard and crawling beneath the bed to sleep. It was safer here, where her father was unlikely to notice her when he returned. But this danger was far from her mind as she curled up in a ball and closed her eyes, smiling as she thought of the bluebird, the fig tree, and her grandmother's angel.

And for the first time in many months, she felt blessed.

9


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: This is the last chapter from the match girl's perspective, which pleases me no end, as I've been having serious thoughts about whether or not I should even include these chapters when I redraft (or at the very least, combine them into one chapter that follows the Andersen fairy tale more explicitly). A good friend and fellow writer convinced me to keep them in for the first draft and see how I feel when the story is complete … I'd very much appreciate your thoughts.**

**Chapter Four**

In the two months that followed her blessings seemed to multiply. Every week a new gift appeared in the cellar of the opera house, and her little floorboard trove was soon crammed with treasures, each one no bigger than a matchbox. There was a tiny ballerina made of silk, a miniature book with gilt-edged pages, a little spinning top… She looked after them all with equal care, but none were quite as precious as the bluebird she had first received. At night when her father was gone she would often take it out, admiring the way its feathers glinted in the moonlight, and marvelling at the life-like detail of its tiny features, which seemed to prove that it could not have been made by any earthly craftsman.

Perhaps she should have been more careful. Her smiles were regarded with suspicion by her father, who threatened to remove them with blows on more than one occasion, but they returned, irrepressibly, as soon as she set foot on the city streets.

She barely noticed the cold, even as December came and the wind grew teeth. To her the world seemed full of magic. The air hummed with carols, and the bitter chill was sweetened by the scent of gingerbread and spiced wine, which was sold in tureens at the soup stand outside the market, whilst indoors the traders sold oysters and fat geese, plucked and trussed and ready for roasting. It was at dusk, though, that the sense of enchantment became more potent, when the lamps were lit and a warm glow emanated from every window. She wandered up and down the boulevards before the shops closed, pressing her nose against the glass, admiring displays of bonbons and ladies hats and miniature train sets and dolls. Most impressive was the crèche at Le Bon Marche, which contained not just the baby Jesus, the Blessed Virgin and the Three Wise Men, but also a tambourine drummer, an organ-grinder, and an entire troupe of acrobats!

It did not grieve her to be on the outside looking in, because she felt a growing conviction that something marvellous was waiting just around the corner. After all, the angel must be some kind of special plan.

All she had to do was be patient…

Two days before Christmas, they planted a fir tree in the Tuileries Gardens. It was a new fashion, imported from Scandinavia, and she joined the small crowd that gathered to watch it being festooned with lights and brightly coloured baubles. Walking home afterwards, she thought more about the angel's plan and what it might involve. Her grandmother had said that it would reveal itself _through a glass darkly,_ which for reminded her of the brightly lit windows she had peered through from the darkness of the street. Thinking of the little treasures she had accumulated, she daydreamed about opening a little shop, where she would display all her pretty things in the window. Of course, she wouldn't sell the bluebird. It was too precious… but it would make a good name for her shop!

Entering the dingy courtyard, she whispered the name under her breath, liking the way it rolled off her tongue.

She was surprised to find her father still at home. He was sitting in front of the stove, and although his limbs were stretched out in a casual pose, there was something in his posture, and the way he had been watching the door, awaiting her return, that should have been a warning.

"Is that everything?" he asked, as she came forward and dropped her earnings into his lazily extended palm.

She nodded, although it seemed a strange question, as she had given him more than her usual offering. He continued to stare at her. It was a strange, cunning look, and it pinned her in place for several uncomfortable moments before he looked away, taking a swig from the foul-smelling bottle that dangled from his free hand. She felt as though she had been physically released. After a few moments she realised that she had been dismissed and crept softly away, deciding that it would be safer to stay in the bedroom until he had gone.

She had barely reached the doorway when she noticed that the floorboard was missing.

All the air seemed to go out of the room. In a daze, she walked towards the missing floorboard and stared into the cavity where her treasures had been hidden. Only her grandmother's cap remained. Or rather one torn part of it, hanging from a loose nail.

She didn't understand…

Deaf to everything except the pounding of her own heart, she did not hear her father's sluggish approach, and so had no opportunity to dodge the blow he wielded at her left ear, knocking her sideways against the door frame. Before she realised what was happening he pulled her up by the collar, lifting her clean off the floor and slamming her against the wall, his face mere inches from hers.

"Thought you could play me for a fool, is that it?" he roared, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Spending all your money on trinkets while you pay me pittance for keeping you?"

Her collar ripped and she fell to the floor, scrambling backwards towards the brass bed, but he grabbed her ankle as she tried to crawl beneath it and pulled her back towards him. Grabbing a fistful of hair at the nape of her neck, he forced her to look at him.

In the other hand he held the bluebird. She stared at it, tears running down her face.

"How much did this cost you?" he demanded, twisting her hair tight. "Tell me, before I knock out your lying teeth!"

"It was a present!"

"Liar!"

"It's mine!" she yelled, writhing in his grip as she tried desperately to snatch it back.

He caught her wrist and squeezed until she yelped in agony. "Nothing under this roof is yours - nothing! Do you understand?"

And he threw the bluebird against the wall, where it smashed into what seemed like a thousand pieces.

Something snapped inside her chest. Summoning every ounce of strength her little body possessed, she kicked out with both legs and her father, in his drunken state, was knocked off balance. His surprise was only temporary, and he soon lumbered to his feet, but she was too fast for him. Launching herself towards the bluebird, she grabbed the largest fragment and scrambled for the door.

"Show your face in this house again and I'll kill you, do you hear me?" he roared as she made her escape. "So help me - I'll kill you!"

She did not look back. Half-tumbling into the courtyard, she burst through the passageway and out into the street. As night fell the slums were beginning to fill with undesirables. Thieves gathered in the cafes and wine-shops, and women swayed in doorways, advertising their trade with carmined lips and gaudy frocks. She ran past them so quickly that their skirts smeared into a kaleidoscope of garish colours and the street lamps became ribbons of light. All around her was an infernal racket. Dogs barks, trays clattered, and raucous laughter spilled out from the cafes, whose musicians scraped out a frantic rhythm on their violins, the patrons stamping and clapping and joining in with throaty hollers.

It rose to a deafening crescendo before subsiding, the streets growing darker and quieter the further she fled.

She stopped running, her energy spent.

A wave of dizziness washed over her. Leaning against the wall of a derelict shop, she drew in several wheezing breaths, which seemed to fill her throat and chest with pins. Her father's words continued to echo in her ears.

_Show your face in this house again and I'll kill you, do you hear?_

Where would she go now?

Where…

The Opéra. She would go to the Opéra and ask the angel. But was it the right day? She tried to remember, but her thoughts were increasingly muddled, and she found herself forgetting the question instead of answering it.

A strange sound, somewhere between a chuckle and a cough, interrupted her thoughts. "Aren't you a pretty little thing?" it rasped. "Lost, are we?"

She gave a little squawk of fright and glanced about wildly. Coloured lights danced in her peripheral vision, but otherwise the street appeared empty. She had begun to wonder if she had imagined the voice when she suddenly heard the shuffle of footsteps, and a shadow emerged from the shop's door well. Stumbling backwards, she veered down the nearest passageway.

It was a dead end. Looking around, she spotted an unhitched cart a few metres away and crawled quickly beneath it, wedging herself between the back wheel and what felt like a brick wall. It was too dark to see anything. Instead, she listened very carefully as the shuffling footsteps approached the entrance to the alleyway.

And then silence…

Something tickled her hairline. She bit back a cry of alarm, batting away what she thought was a spider. Her fingers touched something wet and warm. It trickled down her forehead, and she followed it back to the source, wincing as she found a tender spot on the crown of her head. She tried to remember how she had come across the wound, but the answer was sluggish in coming, and it hurt to think too hard. The coloured lights had begun to crowd her vision. She closed her eyes, but they grew brighter, and a strange crackling sound filling her ears.

Squinting, she opened her eyes again.

It was morning.

She startled, not understanding why she was waking here, wedged between a cart wheel and a cold brick wall, instead of on the floor beneath her grandmother's brass bed. She searched her memory of the night before but could only recall vague sounds and images: the barking of dogs, a crackling sound, a kaleidoscope of garish colours, a strange crackling noise…

…_Show your face in this house again…_

The crackling noise was growing louder. Peering through the spokes of the wheel, she saw a vibrant orange light that seemed to dance and flicker before her eyes. Fire. With a mixture of curiosity and alarm she extricated herself and crawled out from underneath the cart. Her body was stiff and sore and a wave of dizziness almost overcame her as she struggled to her feet.

When it had passed, she saw that she was standing in a courtyard, much smaller than the one she had lived in. There was a strong smell of manure coming from the stables that occupied its ground floor.

In the centre of the courtyard a bonfire was burning. Feeling its warmth on her face, she stepped a little closer, and in doing so she noticed that the fire was fuelled by articles of clothing. Not all of them rags; there was a pair of boots that looked worn but with plenty of life in them. They would probably have fitted her, but the flames were too close, and she was forced to watch as the leather curled and blackened. Her gaze roved across the items still within her reach, spotting a large woollen shawl. She glanced around quickly to make sure that nobody was watching, and then plucked it from the bonfire, wrapping it around her thin shoulders.

Ordinarily she would have fled the scene before anyone spotted her, but she felt no special compulsion to leave. Instead she stood quite still and stared into the flames. Even when a plate smashed in one of the upstairs rooms, she barely flinched.

A strange sound followed from the upstairs room. A low, keening cry, like an animal in pain. Her gaze finally lifted from the mesmeric flames and travelled up, along the gallery, wondering vaguely what was making the sound. Her thoughts felt peculiar and foggy, and she was aware of a dull pain in her skull. Tilting it further back, she saw that the courtyard was open to the sky, which was overcast with white clouds.

The minutes passed. Gradually, little pieces of ash began to break free, drifting like grey feathers, high up into the clouds, where it seemed they were purified, because when they fell back to earth they were a pure and brilliant white. It was only as they settled upon her face and eyelashes that she realised…

It was snowing.

* * *

The hours passed, and the snow fell in thick flurries.

Bareheaded and barefoot, she crept through the blizzard, shivering uncontrollably. It was so terribly cold. The snow-flakes settled upon her head like a white cap and then melted, trickling down her neck and back in icy rivulets. Her little feet were almost blue and in her rags she made an ugly blot on the otherwise picturesque scene. Around her, lights were shining in all the windows, and a wonderful smell of roast goose flavoured the air.

She had almost forgotten that it was Christmas Eve.

Not far from the Madeleine church she heard the bells toll, calling the faithful to midnight mass. Afterwards, the parishioners would go back to their warm homes and celebrate _reveillon_ with their families, feasting on truffled turkey, cold meats and oysters. She remembered Christmas with her grandmother. They could not afford oysters and truffled turkey, but her grandmother had made a delicious porridge, flavoured with vanilla, and afterwards she had put a slipper on the hearth for the baby Jesus to fill…

She closed her eyes and imagined the fat, juicy orange that had been waiting for her on Christmas morning, but she was so perished with cold that she could not recall the taste, even though her mouth watered and her stomach twisted painfully at the memory.

Perhaps if she walked to the church then one of the parishioners would take pity on her; take her back to their warm house, and share their _reveillon _with her. An old widow, perhaps, or even Father Christmas himself, with his fat belly and cloudy white beard.

But her feet were hurting too much to walk any further, and she was so very tired.

She came to corner formed by two houses. One of them projected farther out into the street than the other, creating a natural shelter to the elements, and she crouched down, pulling the hem of her dress over her little blue toes.

In her apron was a single bundle of matches. The rest must have fallen out, although she could not recall where. If she sold them at a slightly higher price, she would be able to replenish her stock, but she was very tempted to strike just one match to warm herself. Unable to resist, she drew one out and scratched it against the wall. It made a warm, bright flame, and as she held her hand over it she imagined that she was sitting in front of a great iron stove with shining brass knobs and a brass cover.

It was so warm and comfortable that she stretched out her feet to warm them too, but in that moment the flame went out, the stove vanished, and she was left with only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.

She struck another match against the wall. It burned even brighter, and where the light fell upon the wall it became transparent like a thin veil, and she could see through it into a cosy dining room. A beautiful, lace-edged cloth was spread upon the table, which was laid with a dinner service of polished silver. On the central platter a roast goose was steaming, stuffed with apples and prunes, and all around it were bowls of buttered vegetables and little cakes and condiments of every kind.

Then the match went out, and she could see only the cold brick wall.

Another match and this time she was sitting under a beautiful Christmas tree. It was much larger and more impressive than the one she had seen in the Tuileries Gardens. Thousands of candles burned on the green branches and coloured pictures like those in the print shops looked down at her.

The match went out, but the Christmas lights remained as bright stars in the sky. One of them fell in a long line of fire.

Someone was dying, she thought. Her grandmother had told her that. When a star fell, a soul went up to God…

She drew another match against the wall, and this time, in its lustre, she saw her old grandmother, even more radiant than she had ever been in life, with such an expression of love in her dark eyes. As the flame began to gutter, she rubbed the whole bundle of matches against the wall, determined to keep her grandmother near her. They gave such a brilliant light, brighter than the noon-day sun. Her grandmother was no longer frail and wizened but tall and strong, and the match girl reached out her arms...

"What are you doing here?" asked her grandmother in a strange, masculine voice.

The light dimmed and the match girl frowned, confusion entering her foggy thoughts. It did not sound like her grandmother. The blizzard swirled ever thicker, blurring her vision, until she could only vaguely see the figure that loomed above her.

"Can you hear me?" it quizzed in the same deep voice. She blinked sleepily as it bent down, tugging at her arm and hands, although she could barely feel them. "Look at you…you'll freeze to death if you stay out here…"

Strong arms lifted her up from the ground. She was too weak to resist, and allowed her head to loll forwards, her cheek resting against something warm and hard. It had been so long since anyone had carried her like this. Her eyelids fluttered closed as she savoured the sensation. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she was barely aware of the length or direction of their journey, until she was being set down on a bench in the narrow hallway of a building she did not recognise.

A finger was tucked under her chin, lifting her face towards the blinding light.

"Still with me?" asked the voice.

She squinted as the man came into focus. He was very large, but his face was kind, with dark hair and bespectacled blue eyes that shifted from concern to relief as he peered back at her.

"Good, very good," he said. "Drink this."

There was somebody lingering behind him, although it took all her energy to focus on the man in front of her. They passed him a steaming tin cup which he pressed into her small hands, guiding the rim to her lips. It tasted hot and bitter and he laughed at the face she pulled. "You don't like coffee? I'm not too fond of it myself, but I'm afraid we don't drink cocoa here. Have you got hold of that? Good. Drink it all, there's a good girl. We can't have you fainting in the middle of the corridor…"

She forced herself to take another small sip, and as she did so her gaze wandered from his face to his broad shoulders, noticing the silver insignia that was stitched there.

He was a police officer.

Before she had time to process this thought any further, they were interrupted by a dreadful racket somewhere close by. The policeman looked in the direction of the sound and then glanced back at his assistant, who said something low and unintelligible. The policeman sighed and straightened up.

"I'll be back," he told her. "Drink the rest of your coffee."

She watched him disappear down the corridor, taking another few sips of the coffee to hide the feeling of unease that had crept over her. The last policeman she had met had accused her of begging and threatened to confiscate her matches. This one seemed kinder but she still did not trust him. Perhaps he would insist on taking her home, thinking that he was being kind. Perhaps her father had reported her as a thief…

Panic flooded her veins. She had to escape before he came back. Looking around, she saw that the front door was only a few metres away. A horrible gargoyle of a man was sitting at the porter's desk, but he was engrossed in a stack of papers, and did not seem to be paying her much attention. She stood up on, feeling a little dizzy, and crept towards the door. Pressing her hands against the glass, she stared out at the unfamiliar street.

"What are you up to?" demanded the gargoyle.

"Looking at the snow…"

He gave her a hard, suspicious glare. "Don't you go touching anything," he warned her, before turning his attention back to his paperwork. She watched him for a moment to make certain he was not watching her, and then turned the handle, opening the door very slightly.

A gust of cold wind immediately betrayed her intentions, but she slipped through the door before the gargoyle had a chance to react. She ran blindly in what she hoped was the direction of the opera house. It was hard to tell because the wind had grown ferocious, making the blizzard angry, like a swarm of white bees. Finally, she reached a square that seemed vaguely familiar. Looking up, she caught a glimpse of the angel on the Opera's roof. She was nearly there! Running along the Rue Scribe, she fell into the snow beside the missing window pane, only to find that someone had nailed a plank of wood over the opening. She tugged at the plank in vain – but it was fastened from the inside and she had no hope of prising it away. Perhaps if she kicked it hard enough…

"You there! Girl!"

She looked up and saw the policeman at the bottom of the Rue Scribe. The gargoyle must have called him as soon as she escaped.

Kicking with all her might, the plank splintered slightly, but held fast. She kicked again and again. The policeman was nearly upon her as it finally fell away, and he grasped at her collar as she shimmied through the gap. She writhed and twisted until her collar tore – she fell to the ground, and he was left holding no more than a threadbare shawl and a few scraps of fabric. Scrambling to her feet, she pushed through the door and did not stop running until she had reached the safety of the third cellar, where she crumpled to the ground with her back against the door, her breath coming in great wheezing gasps.

Slowly, her breathing returned to normal, and she rose unsteadily to her feet. Now that her adrenalin had subsided she felt very weak, but she knew that she would have to hide in case the policeman decided to search the building, and so she made her way over to a clothes rack which held several thick fur coats, concealing herself behind them. One of the fur coats had fallen to the floor and she nestled into it, although it was pleasantly warm in the room, and she could already feel a painful tingling in her extremities as they thawed.

A few moments later, the door opened, and she held her breath. But it was not the policeman. It was the woman in black taffeta, and she was carrying a basket.

She felt a slight pang of disappointment as she watched the woman place the basket in the crate with a bustling, business-like air. This was not how she had imagined her angel. She had imagined a tall, luminous personage with golden hair and feathered wings. What feathers she could see belonged to the woman's dowdy hat. She was just an ordinary old woman of the kind the match girl saw every day at Les Halles, perusing the market stalls for cabbages and turnips.

But she reminded herself that, angel or not, the old woman had been leaving her gifts, and she should be grateful for that. As soon as she had gone the match girl crept out from her hiding place and went over to the crate, anxious to see what new gift was inside the basket. She was surprised to find that it was filled with food and other supplies, just as it had been that first evening when she discovered it. Perplexed, she wondered what this meant. Was it possible that there really was an angel who came after the old woman had gone and transformed the basket's humble contents into a beautiful gift? Perhaps she had intruded on a part of the magic that she never usually saw…

Confused, she returned to her hiding place behind the clothes rack.

The minutes passed. She was not sure how many, because the heat of the room was making her sleepy, and she had almost nodded off when she suddenly became aware that there was someone else in the room.

It was strange, as she had not heard them enter, but the atmosphere in the room had altered. Peering through the folds of fur she saw a shadowy figure moving around the room. It was clad from head to foot in a black cloak, and brought with it a feeling of another world. She felt a lurch of excitement in the pit of her stomach. It was the angel! It must have been wearing the black cloak to cover its wings while it was on earth! It _must_ be the angel, because it had come into the room without making a single noise, without even opening the door, and its feet made no sound upon the creaky wooden floor. She watched as it moved to the crate and silently lifted the lid, craning her neck so far forwards that a strand of fur tickled her nose…

She sneezed.

Gasping, she shrank back and covered her traitorous nose with both hands. She could not see out into the room and she could not follow the angel's footsteps because there was no sound - at least, no sound except her own heart, beating frantically against her ribcage.

Perhaps he had not even heard her. Perhaps he had mistaken the sound for a dog barking on the street above?

She had not even finished this thought when the clothes were suddenly yanked apart and the angel was staring down at her. She could not see his face, but two yellow eyes glowed in the darkness.

Before either of them made a sound, she dove through his legs and scrambled across the floor, so quickly that she barely had time to find her balance. Reaching the door, she found that it was locked, and she yanked at it uselessly with all her feeble strength.

And then a cold, clammy hand fastened around her neck. She gave a strangled yelp of terror as it pulled her back and spun her around, but the sound died on her lips when she saw his face.

It was not an angel, but a demon!

In the dull light his face seemed as white as a skull. The similarity did not end there, for his skin was pulled so taut that every bony contour was visible, from his sunken eye sockets to the workings of his jaw. His nose was nothing more than a black hole, and the skeletal effect was completed by the rictal grin of rage that exposed his ivory teeth and made his lips appear non-existent. In fact, the only thing that convinced her that he was not a skeleton were the eyes that still glowed from deep within their sunken sockets.

Overcome with terror, her own eyes rolled back, her body grew limp in his hold, and she knew nothing but darkness…

**Back to Erik in the next chapter! Oh, and for those who think the 'swarm of white bees' description sounds familiar, that is because it was brazenly stolen from another of Andersen's tales: **_**The Snow Queen.**_** Some people have no scruples…**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I'm so sorry for the delay! My son has been ill, and my laptop is broken, so what little spare time I've had has been spent trying to rescue writing files. Also, this chapter has been a bugger to write for some reason. I'm posting it quickly before I succumb to the urge to redraft...**

**Thanks to everyone who's stuck with me so far **

**Chapter Five**

Erik was pacing.

He was particularly good at pacing, having had much occasion to practice during his tenure as Christine's angel, although this time the creature on his drawing room rug was most emphatically _not_ a beautiful soprano.

It was a little girl.

At least, he had thought it was a little girl in the two months he had spent observing its presence in the third cellar. Upon closer observation he was not so sure. Little girls, he thought, were supposed to be dimpled and angelic, with rosy cheeks and golden curls. This one looked more like a crushed spider, with its matted black hair and brittle limbs tangled up in filthy, soaking wet rags. They had left a wet imprint on his arms and chest and he felt himself begin to panic as it permeated the fabric. He had taken such care to seal himself away from humanity, for its protection as much as his own, and now his lair - his very _skin_ - was contaminated by it.

He stopped pacing and closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he repeated the mantra that he had composed as he carried the girl down from the third cellar.

_He must remain calm. He must remain calm. The girl would be safe as long as he remained calm._

After a moment, he exhaled, feeling slightly more rational. He opened his eyes and looked down at the girl. Beneath the grime, he could see that her skin was regaining its colour, which was reassuring. She had been so pallid and still when he had laid her upon the rug that he had worried she might expire. He had not wanted that, not when he had put so much covert effort into ensuring the ungrateful little flea's welfare.

However, her recovery posed a problem of its own. He was in no fit state to entertain guests, but at the same time he could not simply let her go now that she knew his secret. Suppose she raised the alarm? He had gone to considerable trouble to convince the management that the opera ghost was no more, and after the unpleasant business with the Comte de Chagny he could not run the risk of her telling the constabulary what she had seen. Of course, his usual method of dealing with intruders was out of the question. Monster he might be, but his crimes had never run to infanticide. He knew - from books, rather than personal experience - that children were generally considered to be innocent and guileless creatures, and although she had obviously concealed herself in a dark corner of the third cellar in order to spy upon him, her intentions were unlikely to have been malicious. She had probably been driven by no more than a harmless desire to meet her mysterious benefactor.

That left him with only one option. He would have to keep her prisoner.

Damn women and their infernal curiosity!

He resumed his furious pacing. Erik did not want another prisoner. He had tried that before and it had turned out very badly for all concerned! All he wanted was to be left alone so that he could commit suicide with some semblance of dignity - was that really too much to ask?

_But really, Erik has brought this situation upon himself,_ said a snide, supercilious inner voice. _He encouraged its curiosity with trinkets, and now he acts as though he wants nothing to do with it. Surely the gentlemanly thing to do would be to show the creature hospitality, to offer it shelter and sustenance. Perhaps it would like a glass of Tokay?_

Erik recognised the voice. It was the same voice that had told him that it would be a marvellous idea to pretend to be the Angel of Music. Insidious and sly in its methods, when he had resolved to tell Christine the truth about his identity, the voice had reminded him of his deformity and assured him that nobody would ever look upon his face with anything but horror. _Besides, _it cajoled,_ she wants you to be the Angel of Music. Did she not ask if you were the angel her father promised to send? Of course she did. Her poor, dead father whom she misses so terribly. Surely sometimes it is kinder to be dishonest. Imagine how heartbroken she would be if she discovered the truth…_

The voice was not to be trusted!

Luckily, it was interrupted by a noise from the rug, allowing Erik to wrest back control of his faculties. The girl appeared to be waking up. He stopped pacing and drew himself up to his full height in preparation, although he made no attempt to retrieve his mask from the table. Let her see him in all his hideous glory! There would be no Angel of Music this time, no sugar-coated subterfuge!

He watched with cool detachment as her prone form stirred and subsided and then stirred again, a series of soft snuffles indicating her return to consciousness. She grew still for a moment, no doubt becoming aware of her surroundings, and then pushed herself up into a sitting position. Erik gritted his teeth, steeling himself for her scream.

It never came.

Oddly, the match girl did not seem to notice his looming presence. Instead, she gazed into the fire with an odd, vacant expression.

He cleared his throat, and she looked at him.

Although his deformities were on full display, she still did not scream; merely stared at him with wide, ingenuous brown eyes. Erik was disconcerted. Perhaps she believed herself to be dreaming? She frowned slightly, as if he were no more than a particularly ugly statue, and then her gaze slid from his face and travelled slowly around the room, taking in its dust and dishevelment; how every surface appeared to be littered with the dry, brown remains of flowers that looked as if they had been blown in by an autumn wind.

Erik felt his hackles rise. "I do hope my home pleases you," he sneered, "for you will never leave it. Do you understand? You have fallen prey to the opera ghost!"

When this did not provoke a reaction, he tried to increase his menace by circling his prey, allowing the hissing gas-lamps to cast strange shadows upon his gruesome face. He slid easily into his old persona. "Oh, if you had been a good little girl, and minded your own business, you might have had a hundred trinkets even more beautiful than the ones you have already received. But you have been greedy, and intruded upon my privacy, and for that you must be punished! No bargains or reprieves! You are my prisoner now and no-one shall come to your rescue! Are you not terrified? Perhaps you do not understand the full horror of your predicament. This is no ordinary house, my flea, with ordinary doors and ordinary windows through which you might escape. It is a box of tricks - and deadly ones at that! The lake that surrounds it is haunted by a siren that has eaten hundreds of trespassers, all of them braver and stronger than you…"

She did not even flinch. Erik stopped circling her and straightened up, feeling very perturbed.

"You are a strange creature," he said. "What is your name?"

His enquiry was met by silence, and his temper began to fray. "Are you quite deaf? Answer me! Do you truly not understand the deadly path down which your curiosity has led you? Surely you know what became of the cat…"

At this implication the girl finally took fright, her eyes glassing with tears, and Erik immediately regretted his words. If she cried then he would be undone!

"None of that," he said gruffly. "Remember this is entirely of your own doing. We must all learn to face the consequences of our actions! And Erik will not harm you, as long as you perform your duties to his liking. Do you understand?"

Of course she did not understand. In his flustered state, Erik had not even considered what those duties might entail. He looked around, seeking inspiration from his squalid surroundings.

"You are to live here as my servant," he improvised. "You will not weep or wail or try to escape. Of course, there is no way out, so I mention this only out of courtesy, as my last servant tried to escape and was gobbled up by the siren before she had managed to swim more than three metres across the lake. Nasty business. That was six months and as you can see my home has consequently fallen into a state of disrepair. You will rectify this situation. You will sweep up every petal, every cobweb, every crumb. You will clean and polish and scale and scrub. And when you have achieved this, you will keep my home in a state of spotless preservation, no matter how many hours it takes you. I do not want to see so much as a speck of dust."

He gave her a narrow look, trying to ascertain if any of this information had penetrated.

"Now, stand up."

To his surprise, the girl complied. Erik noticed that her legs shook slightly, but he ignored the urge to fetch her a chair or a footstool to sit upon, forcing himself to stay in character.

"If you perform these duties to my liking then your life will be spared," he said imperiously. "Furthermore, you will not find me cruel or unreasonable. I will even provide you with sustenance and a place to sleep."

And he nodded to himself, conscience satisfied.

Unfortunately her attention had strayed a second time, and she was now engaged in examining the contents of the mahogany whatnot. The vacant expression had returned. Erik clenched his jaw and forced himself to remain calm, reasoning that it was probably hunger and exhaustion, not some inherent truculence, that was causing her to behave in such a manner. He would have to remedy this condition if he was to have any hope of getting a day's work out of her. Blasted creature! She had been in his lair for less than an hour, and already she was causing him trouble! Well, she would not be rewarded for such behaviour. He would refuse to give her victuals until she at least understood the scope of her duties.

"Come," he said, sweeping impatiently from the room. "I will show you the extent of my abode…"

He had drawn back the green damask curtain that separated the drawing room from the library he now entered, the girl following close behind. "I spend much of my time in here," he explained, "so this is where you will start." Although she still appeared slightly dazed, he detected the faintest spark of interest as she noticed his collection, her gaze lingering on the golden spines. "You will refrain from touching any of the books," he told her, and she looked quickly away, apparently fascinated by the patterns in the carpet.

"This way…"

Grinding his teeth, he took her back through the drawing room and into a dark, panelled chamber containing a long table and chairs. Above it, thick with cobwebs, hung a low chandelier. "This is the dining room. As I am not in the habit of entertaining, it is seldom used, but I expect you to clean it as thoroughly as you clean the library. It is important to keep up appearances, after all."

There were two further doors; one small and unassuming; the other, at the end of a short corridor, was ornate and somewhat oriental in appearance. "You are not to enter that room under any circumstances," he told her, before approaching the smallest door, which he opened to reveal a long galley kitchen.

Beneath the mould and grime it was practical and well-appointed, with spacious cupboards, a larder, a water-tank, and a cast iron range. The last meal to have been prepared in there seemed to have been abandoned without being served. The rotten carcass of a chicken - or some large bird, in any instance - sat upon the carving tray, the indistinguishable contents of the serving dishes had sprouted blue fur, and the sink was filled with similarly afflicted copper pans. Erik remained just long enough to indicate the presence of a tiny scullery before returning to the drawing room.

Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was nearly three o'clock in the morning. No wonder she looked exhausted.

He had not yet given any thought to where she might sleep. Christine's room was out of the question, of course, and he did not want her creeping around his lair at all hours, searching for an escape route. There was really only one option. Approaching the picture of the Persian tower, he worked the hidden mechanism, turning it the other way, so that the staircase, instead of leading up to the third cellar, twisted down into the Communard's dungeon.

As the name suggested, the dungeon had once been used by the radicals who had seized control of the city in the wake of the Prussian war. Whilst they had used it to house political prisoners, after their defeat Erik had used it as both wine cellar and powder-magazine, barrelling enough gunpowder to reduce the Place de l'Opéra to a smouldering crater, should the need have arisen.

Although he no longer used it to store ammunition it remained a damp and fetid place, musty with the lingering smell of damp powder. Hardly a suitable apartment for a creature so obviously in need of better care, but Erik did not falter as he lit a bull's-eye lantern and led the girl down to the cell at the far end of the dungeon. To his relief, she entered without him needing to coax or threaten, wandering into the far corner and settling down against the wall.

She looked so bewildered that for an absurd moment he contemplated offering words of comfort. Disturbed by this impulse, he averted his gaze.

"I will return in a few hours," he murmured.

There was nothing more to say. Locking the cell door, he returned to the drawing room and sealed the entrance to the dungeon, a sickness pooling in his stomach as he thought of her alone and shivering in the darkness. But it was for her own good. She would be safe in the dungeon - safe from his infernal temper, and safe from his kindness, which was much more dangerous. He had been kind to Christine at first and look how that had turned out. During his time as the Khanom's executioner, he had dispatched many prisoners to satisfy his hatred of humanity, but that number paled into insignificance when he considered the many thousands he had been prepared to annihilate in the name of love.

Recalling this, his gaze fell upon the two ebony boxes sitting upon either end of the mantelpiece. How dainty and innocuous they looked. Inside were two small figurines cast in dark Japanese bronze.

A scorpion and a grasshopper.

_Aren't they pretty, my dear? Look! If you turn the grasshopper we shall all be blown up. It's true! There is enough powder beneath our feet to destroy an entire quartier of Paris. But if you turn the scorpion, Christine, then all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Isn't that marvellous? To celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to the Parisians who are at this moment applauding some poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer's above our heads… you will make them a present of their lives! For you, with your own fair hands - you shall turn the scorpion. And merrily, merry we shall be married!_

He could see Christine quite clearly, still wearing the shift she had worn in the final act of _Faust_, beating her bare arms against the wall, trying in vain to gain admittance to the torture chamber where her beloved Vicomte was trapped. And he could hear his own voice, rising in shrill, demented tones…

_You won't have the scorpion? Then I turn the grasshopper. But be warned, Christine, for the grasshopper jumps jolly high!_

_Erik—_

_Enough!_

_Erik, stop! Erik I have turned the scorpion!_

_Torrents of water gushed beneath their feet, filling the powder magazine and gurgling through the cracks in the torture chamber's floor. A terrible roaring sound filled his ears as the waters continued to rise, mingled with the shouts of the men trapped inside, and the growing hysteria in Christine's voice as she realised that, although she had prevented him from blowing up the opera house, he still intended to kill her fiancé. She was on her knees, now, clutching at his trouser leg, blood trickling from the wound on her forehead. He moved as if to shake her off, reaching for the scorpion once more…_

And then something glinted in his peripheral vision, bringing him back to the present.

Laid on the rug, close to the dark patch the girl's sodden clothes had left behind, was a small object. He bent down and picked it up, turning it curiously between his thumb and forefinger. It was a fragment of the little glass bluebird he had made for the girl some months ago. It must have fallen from her apron, although he could not say how it had been broken.

As he slid it into his breast pocket his eye caught the little ebony box containing the scorpion. It was open. He remembered reaching for it, only moments ago, in what he now realised had been more than a vivid recollection of events long past. He had been about to release another surge of water into the Communard's dungeon, which would have flooded the cell in which the girl was imprisoned. Realising what the likely outcome would have been, his mouth set into a grim line.

He needed to get rid of the girl as soon as possible.

* * *

When he returned to the dungeon a few hours later he found that the girl was still awake, and watching him with the same peculiar, disconnected gaze as before. Sliding a tray beneath the cell door, he considered the possible reasons for her continued imperviousness to his unmasked face. It had crossed his mind that she might be damaged in some way, although it was more likely that she was simply still in shock and struggling to come to terms with the grim reality of her situation.

It took her a moment to respond to the tray of food, and when she did, her lack of appetite troubled him even further. He watched with growing concern as she nibbled the corner of a bread roll, wincing as she swallowed the barest morsel. During the last few hours he had heard her coughing, and so he had passed the time by preparing a tonic - one that he had used when Christine had been afflicted by a sore throat. This was not exactly a kindness, he told himself. He was merely ensuring that she would be able to perform her chores without sickness interfering.

To his relief, she drank all of it, and so he did not pass comment on the half-eaten breakfast as he unlocked the cell door and led her upstairs.

He left her in the scullery and went into the library, where he selected a heavy volume at random before returning to the kitchen to find the girl standing in the doorway, having equipped herself with a mop and bucket. She was _watching_ him again. Suppressing a shudder, he retreated to the relative sanctuary of his own room, making sure that the door was locked behind him.

There was no escape. After a few moments the tranquil silence was broken by the clatter of pots in the kitchen, and so he stalked over to a chair in the farthest corner, letting the book fall open where its spine had formerly cracked and fixing his gaze upon a particularly fitting passage.

_I have convinced myself that there is nothing else in the world_, it began. _No sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Doesn't it follow that I don't exist? Surely I must exist if—_

Erik gritted his teeth, and turned the page with steely determination.

_Surely I must exist if it's me who is convinced of something. But there is a deceiver, supremely powerful and cunning whose aim is to see that I am—_

Cough-cough.

Irritation coiled below his sternum. _Whose aim is to see that I am something. Thus having fully weighed every consideration, I must—_

Cough-cough.

—_finally conclude that the statement 'I am, I exist'_ must—

Cough-cough.

—_be true whenever I state it or—_

Cough-cough.

—_mentally consider—_

Cough.

Erik sprang to his feet with a snarl of rage, throwing down the book and whipping the catgut from his sleeve. Gripping it tightly, he made several brisk laps of the coffin. The situation was untenable! There was nowhere to hide, and if it continued, he would surely strangle the girl!

How could he protect her from Erik? As long as she remained in his lair she was in danger…

_He must remain calm._

His other Christine watched him from the corner of the room, her eyes dark pits, for he had removed the glass some weeks ago in order to make the bluebird. Sobered by this memory, he placed the catgut in his coffin, closed the lid, and went over to his work table, taking several deep breaths. When his temper had finally cooled he sat down and surveyed the items that were laid out in front of him.

The inventory had a calming effect. There was a small wooden box with compartments for his tools, a haberdashery basket, a few curls clipped from his other Christine's wig… and a tiny angel, with golden hair and wings of silver thread stiffened with glue. It was smaller than similar figurines he had seen in the crèches that adorned shop windows at this time of year. Small enough, in fact, to fit inside a match box.

He removed the bluebird from his breast pocket and conducted a morose examination.

How had it come to this? He thought back over the events of the last few months. He had been very angry when he had realised that someone other than Madame Giry had been responsible for the missing figs. In his disjointed fury he had imagined that the intruder had sought to draw him from his lair and capture him somehow - to bring the infamous opera ghost to justice. It had seemed credible. After all the trouble he had caused, the constabulary had doubtless placed a handsome price upon his decidedly _unhandsome_ head. Erik agreed that he deserved to be punished for his crimes, but he also knew that his trial and execution would be little more than a freak show, and he refused to give them the satisfaction of staging it. He had spent the greater part of his life at the mercy of society - hated, ostracised, feared and humiliated - and in death he was determined to claw back his dignity.

And so, on the night Madame Giry had delivered her next basket, he had concealed himself behind the backcloth in the third cellar, with the express intention of strangling the fool who thought to profit from his arrest.

When he had discovered that the intruder was no more than a little match girl, he had been thrown into a quandary.

He could not kill her. She was only a child, and a starving one at that, judging by her scrawny appearance and the speed at which she devoured the figs. Neither could he kill himself, for his suicide would mean the end of the figs, and the depletion of her much-needed food supply. It was a sticky dilemma. If he killed himself, Christine would be safe, but the match girl would starve, and he would not be able to die with a clean conscience.

Finding himself at an impasse, he had allowed her to continue stealing the figs until he could think of a solution.

As for the gifts, he could not readily explain why he had started making them. Of course, he had tried to convince himself that he was merely trying to occupy his time now that his other Christine was finished, but at the same time, he could not deny that it secretly pleased him to see how much she enjoyed them.

He rummaged through the contents of his work box, troubled by the existence of such tender feelings. They were not in his nature. It was Christine's fault, he decided, looking askance at the blind manikin. He was certain that he had been quite devoid of human emotion before their unfortunate tryst had taken place. Clearly she had infected him with it, but he knew that what he felt now was only the remnant of her goodness … his withered soul could not sustain humanity. The monster would always win.

There was not enough glass in his work box to mend the bluebird. His lip curled in annoyance. He would have to request another selection of glass eyes from Madame Giry when he wrote his list.

Perhaps she would also be able to arrange a more suitable guardian for the girl when the time came. He was not sure why such an obvious solution had not occurred to him before. In truth, he should have asked Madame Giry to deal with matter when he had first laid eyes on the girl. It would have saved him a great deal of trouble.

Hindsight was a wonderful thing, he thought bitterly.

He put the bluebird to one side and was about to resume work on the angel — which he thought might do as a parting gift, by way of apology, once everything was arranged — when it suddenly occurred to him that the girl's coughing had not disturbed him for quite some time. In fact, he could not hear any sound coming from outside his room.

It was oddly concerning. He rose, and crept to the door, resting his ear against the dark wood. Still nothing. He unlocked the door and made his way down the corridor, where his concern soon yielded to amazement.

The dining room was spotless. She had dusted the cobwebs from the chandelier, whose reflection could be seen upon the surface of the highly polished table. The floor had been mopped, and a soft patina had been restored to the panelling on the walls. Peering into the kitchen, he found racks of clean plates, a scrubbed table, and copper pans hung in order of size above a freshly blacked range. In the drawing room, not a single shrivelled petal could be seen. Things which had for months been shrouded by a smog of neglect now leapt out at him. The strings of the harp, the piano keys, an ostrich egg and other items displayed upon the whatnot. The girl had even swept out the grates and lit the fires.

A peculiar feeling came over him, almost as though the last nine months had never happened. He was put in mind of certain folk tales, in which the unwary traveller strays into a fairy ring, and afterwards returns to his home to discover that many centuries have passed.

He looked at the clock. It was past midnight. Surely it had not been so long since he set her to work?

As if in response, there was a quiet cough from beyond the library curtain. He pushed it to one side and saw that the girl was fast asleep in front of the crackling fire, an open book laid between her head and the hearth-stone. Pulling on the tasselled cord to draw the curtain back fully, he went into the room to get a closer look. It was one of his collection of illuminated manuscripts, the priceless vellum laid open at an illustration of a saint slaying a dragon.

He had expressly forbidden her to touch any of his books. By rights, he knew that he should muster rage and enforce some kind of punishment, but there seemed little point in getting into character in front of an unconscious audience.

Instead, he bent down and took her gently in his arms. As he straightened up she burrowed against his chest, one hand clutching at the lapel of his soiled dress suit, and he froze in alarm.

A reflex, he told himself.

From this proximity he could see that her cheeks were flushed - unnaturally, it seemed, as if they had been stained with carmine dye. More than likely it was a consequence of sleeping too close to the fire, but it troubled him as he made his way through into the drawing room. The child was obviously sick, and the cold, damp conditions in the Communard's dungeon were unlikely to aid her recovery. He paused by the picture of the Persian tower and considered his options. There was nothing he could do tonight, but tomorrow he would see about finding her a proper place to sleep until a more permanent solution could be arranged. The scullery would do. After all, she was a servant, not a guest. There was enough wood in the outer cellars with which to construct a rudimentary bed, and he was sure he could find something to use as a _paillaisse_. It would not be luxurious by any standards, but it would be clean and comfortable.

Until then, she would have to make do with another blanket.

He carried her down to the dungeon.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Through dangers untold, and the death of my dratted Toshiba, I bring you the next chapter. It is rougher than the rest, because my printer is very much affronted by the little upstart of a new laptop that keeps trying to connect with it, so I haven't been able to print it off and review it properly. Also, I'm running out of maternity leave very quickly, so kind of need to leave the redrafting until I have a completed story.**

**Thank you for reading :)**

Chapter Six

They were playing _Faust_ again, which always set her teeth on edge.

It was the first performance since Christmas and the auditorium was stuffed to the gills with a jovial crowd. The inhabitants of box five – a banker named Tricard and his extended family – were in particularly high spirits, running her ragged with their constant demands for more refreshments.

Madame Giry was grateful for the distraction, but it was only temporary. During the interval she only half attended to her daughter's animated chatter, and when Meg finally left her side to speak to her friends, she remained at the barre, fiddling with the ribbon of the slippers she had been given to hold. She kept one eye on the police commissioner, who stood at the far side of the Foyer de Danse, engrossed in conversation with one of the prettier ballerinas. In her agitated state she imagined herself to be under surveillance. Of course she knew that was absurd. She was hardly a criminal mastermind, and besides, the commissioner's furtive glances were much more likely to be in appreciation of the ballerina's décolletage and slender ankles than her own dowdy figure – but she could not help it. His presence reminded her of the night that Christine Daaé had disappeared, the night she had spent locked in the stage manager's office, accused of helping to blackmail the directors out of hundreds of thousands of francs.

She had been lucky to come through that night without being arrested, let alone sacked. And yet here she was, left to perform her duties as though nothing had happened.

If only they knew what she had been doing whilst their backs were turned…

Forcing herself to look away from the commissioner, she scanned the crowd for Meg, and was surprised to see her in animated conversation with one of the gentleman subscribers. Usually she passed the interval talking with her fellow ballerinas.

The gentleman in question was not handsome, but he seemed attentive, and Madame Giry felt a little surge of maternal pride at the sight. Her Meg had come a long way in the last nine months. After the Comte de Chagny's death, his lover, La Sorelli, had left Paris for her native Italy, not wanting her career as a prima ballerina to be tainted by the scandal. Her departure had seen Meg promoted from the corps de ballet to a soloists position, which meant a little more money – although it was never quite enough to cover her expenses – and more importantly her own dressing room, where she could entertain gentleman admirers.

It was a promising outlook, very promising indeed, and for that reason Madame Giry knew that she would have to take especial care that her continued work for the ghost was not discovered. She did not want to ruin her daughter's chances of making an advantageous match.

Her troubled state of mind did not go unnoticed. When they returned to her dressing room after the performance, Meg asked if there was something wrong.

"Nothing at all," she lied, through a mouthful of hair-pins. "Now keep still, unless you want it to turn out lopsided."

"It's meant to fall down a little at the back—"

"I can see that!"

Squinting at the cigarette card that was tucked into the mirror's frame, she tried to make out the intricate hairstyle of the actress it depicted. Meg was right; behind the frizzled curls and high chignon, a small amount of hair had been left to cascade over the nape of her neck. Tutting loudly, she snatched up the comb and used it to pull several strands of soot-coloured hair from the back of the chignon, trying to replicate the effect. Meg winced at this rough treatment, but did not complain.

"You know," she said presently, "it's been almost a year now."

"Don't move your head, I said. A year since what?"

"Since they found Joseph Buquet…"

"Hmn."

There was a brief pause. "Ma… do you think it's true, what they say about the ghost? You knew him better than anyone."

Madame Giry glanced at her daughter's reflection in the mirror. She had never told her what had happened on the night of Christine Daaé's disappearance, and although Meg knew that she attended the ghost's box, Madame Giry had always kept silent about their other dealings. But she knew that Meg was a magpie for gossip, and wondered if she had come to the information by some other means.

"I knew that he wanted to be left alone. That's all," she said, as if she had nothing to hide. "Why, what do people say?"

"That he's gone. That he's gone for good."

"Well, I haven't seen him."

"But you've been so distracted lately. I thought—"

"If you must know," she said, sliding a jewelled comb into the chignon, "I've been wondering where the money will come from to pay for all this finery. You must think I'm made of it."

Meg had the grace to blush. "Well," she said, turning her head from side to side to admire the finished article, "you won't need to worry if tonight goes according to plan. The Baron says I'll have more pin money a week than I could make in a year on my soloist's wage."

"The Baron?"

"The Baron de Barbazac!" she exclaimed. "Really, Ma, I told you all about him earlier. I knew you weren't listening."

"I heard you!" Slightly flustered, Madame Giry disguised the fact by turning away, gathering various discarded items of clothing from the floor. The ghost had once told her that he could make Meg into an Empress. After everything that had come out since, she had thought he must have been playing her for a fool, but now? She knew that the Baron de Barbazac was meant to be extraordinarily wealthy. She had not seen him at the Opéra before, but he must have been the awkward young man whose ear she had seen Meg chewing at the interval. "And how long have you known this Baron?"

"About a week," said Meg dreamily, her worries about the ghost apparently forgotten. "He's… oh, Ma, he's lovely. When he first started coming to the Opéra the other girls wouldn't speak to him on account of him being funny looking, but I think he's really sweet. You wouldn't think he was a Baron because he's not at all lofty like some of them are. I suppose he's very young."

"And you all of sixteen," Madame Giry scoffed, although she was touched by her daughter's words. "Where is he taking you, at this time of night?"

"To the Café Anglais," Meg said, standing up to admire her gown, which was also new; a dusky shade of lavender that lent a certain richness to her dark eyes. "Do I look alright? I've never been to such a fancy place before – except for the Foyer, I suppose – and really I should be wearing silk. He said he that doesn't care about all that but I do! The hair is perfect, though. Thank you." She noticed the petticoat that her mother had just stooped to retrieve. "Oh! Could you darn that for me? It has a tear."

"I hope you don't prattle like this at the Café Anglais…"

"If you must know he finds my conversation quite fascinating," said Meg airily. "And guess what else? He said I was beautiful. Me – beautiful! Can you believe it?"

Madame Giry snorted, but she was secretly very pleased. Meg, with her sloe-black eyes and scrawny, undernourished look, had never been noticed in that way before, much less been called beautiful.

"…La Sorelli used to eat there all the time," Meg wittered on, "and they used to dine in Le Grand Sixteen, which is absolutely the finest private salon in Paris, all mahogany and gold leaf. I remember she told us once about a dinner the head chef prepared for the Tsar of Russia and some others, I forget who, and they had Ortalons – you know, the little bird – on toast, and roast lobster, and some extraordinarily expensive champagne they served in a special bottle so that the Tsar could admire the golden bubbles…"

"You sound more interested in the food than the company," Madame Giry observed.

"Well, you're wrong. Although I would very much like to try the lobster. Anyway, I mustn't keep him waiting. He has a private carriage waiting by the subscriber's entrance." She pulled on her cape, and for a moment Madame Giry was struck by how very grown up her daughter suddenly looked. How had that happened? Her little Meg, who only yesterday had been toddling about in a tenement courtyard, her patched apron covered in coal dust.

"Marguerite," she said, and Meg paused in the doorway.

"Yes, Ma?"

"Mind it's just dinner." Meg rolled her eyes. "I mean it! You're very young, and I see a lot of what goes on here. Don't you go doing anything silly before you can sure of his intentions. Remember, you're a lady now."

"But I'm not a lady," answered Meg with a wicked grin. "I'm practically a baroness!"

Madame Giry pursed her lips at such cheek, but Meg was already gone, leaving her to satisfy her temper by muttering to herself as she settled down to darn the torn petticoat. She remained at this task for over an hour. If anyone had put their head into the dressing room, she would have said that she was doing her mending here, instead of in her own cramped apartment, to save on the cost of lamp oil.

As it happened, no-one did, and when she was finished she checked the time on her fob-watch. Half past midnight. Folding the petticoat, she put it away in the closet and retrieved the basket she had placed there before the performance. She lifted the little muslin square that covered its contents, checking that the figs were still intact – to reassure herself, more than anything, as the ghost had not complained about their absence for several weeks now.

Satisfied that everything was as it should be, she locked up for the night, making her way through the deserted corridors and down the staircase that led to the old prop room in the third cellar. She lit the lantern that she kept just inside the door and stood for a moment on the threshold.

Not that she would ever admit it, but she was a little frightened of the old prop room. This was the room where Joseph Buquet had been found hanged. Everyone said the ghost had killed him and made it look like suicide, and she had an uncomfortable suspicion that there was more than a grain of truth in this rumour.

Of course, she knew that he was not a real ghost. Real ghosts did not require bread and cheese and figs. He must be a man of flesh and blood to need such things. A very dangerous man, to be capable of extortion and murder. Perhaps even a little unhinged. She thought of the strange items he had requested lately – such as modelling wax and no fewer than ten pairs of glass eyes – and felt a shiver of unease as she approached the crate where he had instructed her to leave the basket, as if someone had drawn a cold finger up her spine.

Lifting the lid, she told herself crossly that she had nothing to fear. Apart from the strange business with the figs he had never been less than a perfect gentleman where she was concerned. And a very generous one at that, paying her well above the going rate for her services. If it had not been for him then Meg's penchant for fripperies would have bankrupted her years ago!

Relaxing slightly, she placed the basket inside the crate. In a few moments she would be on her way. A few moments more and she would be safely ensconced in her apartment, the deadlock turned, a bowl of sorrel soup steaming in front—

"Madame Giry?"

The lid fell with a clatter, and she spun around. "Who's there?" she gasped.

"Do not be afraid, Madame Giry. I mean you no harm."

She knew that voice. She knew that voice very well. Raising the lantern high, she peered anxiously into the shadows, although she already knew there would be nothing to see.

"What do you want?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

"As always, I require your assistance," said the ghost. She was not even sure what direction his voice was coming from. "But I am afraid it will be necessary for me to reveal myself. You must promise me that you will not scream."

Something inside her baulked. She had never seen him in the flesh before. In all the years she had worked for him, the ghost had never been more than a disembodied voice. She was afraid to cross that line – but she would not have anyone thinking she was a coward, him especially! And so she stuck out her chin and drew her dumpy, unintimidating figure up to its full height.

"Do I look like the screaming type?" she asked, with as much indignation as she could muster. "You must have me mistaken for a one of the ballerinas! Come out, if you must."

There was a soft sound, as if the ghost had sighed. "I am grateful to hear that," he said. "Now, do you see the cloth hanging from the wall to your left? The one that depicts a city in silhouette, with glass stars above the rooftops?"

"I do."

"I am standing behind it. I tell you this because I have no wish to startle you again. In the past, people have found my appearance to be quite… alarming."

"As I said, you'll not hear so much as a peep out of me," she assured him, hoping it was true.

"Very well…"

Gripping the lantern tightly, she stared at the cloth, her heart pounding hard enough to crack a rib, her mouth set into an obstinate line. How would he reveal himself? Would the cloth part in two like a theatre curtain, or would he simply step out from one side? It was almost absurd. If she had not been so frightened, she would have laughed out loud.

In the end he did neither of these things. One moment he was not there, and the next he was standing in front of her.

He locked exactly as Joseph Buquet had described him to anyone who cared to listen: a very tall, skeletally thin man, wearing a dress suit, opera cape, and a soft felt hat. Most of his face was concealed by a black leather mask which shone softly in the lantern's light. Only his lips were visible, so thin and pale that they were almost non-existent.

"So you're not just a voice," she murmured, breaking the silence.

He gave a little bow. "Allow me to introduce myself, Madame Giry. I am the Phantom of the Opera."

"I know who you are!" she snapped, nodding in the direction of his mask. "Though I must say the mask seems a trifle unnecessary. Do you think I'll run off and tell the police?"

"It is not a question of trust," he said.

He did not elaborate, but she knew very well the rumours about what lay beneath his mask, and decided that it was best not to press the matter. "Well then," she blustered. "How may I be of assistance?"

"There is a girl. My… my ward." He spoke haltingly, choosing his words with care. "She is very ill and I cannot send for a doctor. I thought that, as a mother, you might be better acquainted with nursery ailments than I."

"To be sure, I've seen my fair share of them," she said, rather surprised by the idea of the ghost having a ward. "Do you know which one it is?"

"I do not. In this area I am woefully inadequate. I thought… rather I hoped… that perhaps you might come and see her for yourself."

"Where is she?"

"In my house," he said. "Beneath our feet, on the banks of the underground lake."

"Oh…"

"I realise this is all very unorthodox," he went on, speaking very quickly now, "and I understand your reluctance to follow me, after everything I have subjected you to. I would never have asked this of you. But the girl is very sick. Mortally so, I fear, and if anything were to happen… I will pay you very handsomely! Name your price and I will double it! But you must come…."

His tone was really quite persuasive, and Madame Giry was forced to remind herself that he had proven himself to be a consummate liar. Why, for all she knew this girl might not even exist. She might be a genuine phantom, invented as a way of luring the weak and gullible down to the ghost's lair...

But for what purpose? If he killed her, then he would have to find someone else to deliver his provisions, and if there really was a girl, she would never forgive herself if the poor little thing were to perish because of her refusal.

She squared her shoulders, her mind made up.

"Take me to her."

The ghost did not waste any more time. He pulled back the cloth to reveal a doorway in the bare stone that should not have been there. Taking a deep breath, she followed him into the darkness, down a winding staircase that forced them into awkward proximity for a few moments before they emerged into what appeared to be a very ordinary drawing room. Madame Giry looked about, amazed that such a place could exist so far beneath the ground. Of course, she had heard stories about the ghost's lair, but they had all involved a cavernous, carved-out, stone-walled sort of place, filled with stalagmites and dripping candles. The reality was so bourgeois it was almost bland. Dark, heavily-patterned wallpaper, armchairs with antimacassars, a pianoforte… the only clues to its subterranean location were the absence of windows and the low ceiling, which gave it a slightly claustrophobic feel.

"Here, here," he said. "I have tried to keep her warm."

The ghost was hovering by a sofa in front of the fire. Laid on the sofa, covered in a variety of blankets, was the girl he had told her about.

Not a figment, after all.

She could tell immediately that the girl was gripped by a fever. Only her little face was visible, but her cheeks were bright red, except for the area around her mouth, which was ominously pale. Madame Giry hurried to the sofa and placed a hand upon her forehead. It was scorching hot. Opening her mouth, she saw that the girl's tongue was also bright red, and flecked with little white spots like the skin of a strawberry, confirming her worst suspicions.

"Scarlatina," she pronounced. "Meg had it when she was a little girl. Very bad it was." She straightened up, unbuttoning her sleeves and rolling them up to the elbows. There was no time to waste. "The first thing we need to do is get her away from the fire and put her straight to bed. Where is her room?"

Twisting his hands together, the ghost did not immediately answer. He seemed slightly at war with himself, and kept glancing into an adjoining room, which was hidden from her view by a green velvet curtain.

"Monsieur? We must act quickly!"

"Of course. This way…"

He led her into the adjoining room – a library – where a bookcase swung back to reveal a hidden doorway. Again, he seemed hesitant, unwilling to cross the threshold. Madame Giry, losing her patience, carried the girl into the room as the gas lights hissed to life around her, revealing a well-appointed bedroom.

She placed the girl on top of the counterpane and took hold of her feet. They were filthy and chilblained; feet that appeared to have walked the streets in all weathers. "I'll need hot and cold water," she called out, rubbing them vigorously. "And I'll need something to put her feet in - a bedpan will do."

Frowning as she worked, she let her gaze trail over the girl's ragged clothes and grimy, blackened fingernails. She certainly did not look like a gentleman's ward. She looked like a common street urchin. What was going on here? Nearby, she could hear the sound of running water, and when had it ceased she looked up to see the ghost approaching with a bowl, which he set on the bedside table. He had removed his cape and felt hat, revealing a somewhat dishevelled head of dark hair, although he was still wearing his gloves, which were soiled. In fact his whole countenance was shabbier than it had seemed in the cellar. What little she could see of his skin was taut and sallow.

"There is hot running water in the bathroom," he said, "although I can boil some in the kitchen if necessary. Is there anything else you require?"

"Yes," she said. "Some shears, and nitrate of silver, if you have it. Have you given her anything?"

"Only a tonic, for the throat."

She broke off from rubbing the girl's feet and opened her mouth again, peering inside. "Well, whatever it was, it's done the trick. There's no ulcers that I can see." She straightened up and began to remove the girl's clothes, ripping the tattered fabric in her haste. "These will need to be burned, along with the blankets. Scarlatina is wicked for spreading. I heard about a medical student at the university, died from it, and his trunk was sent back to his family in Rouen, with his clothes packed up inside. Half of them were dead within a week. Can't catch it twice, though. Have you—"

Looking up, she was disconcerted to find the room empty. After a moment she noticed that a pair of kitchen shears and a little medicine bottle had appeared on top of a nearby chest of drawers. The ghost must have brought them and then left the room again for some unknown reason.

It was very odd, but she did not have time to dwell upon his strange behaviour. She needed to bring the girl's temperature down — and fast.

Having removed the last of the rags, she went into the bathroom, placed a large towel in the bottom of the tub, and set the hot tap running. Later, she would wrap the towel around the girl's feet in an attempt to draw the fever down from her head, but for now she let the towel steep. Taking a jug from the marble-topped vanity, she filled this with hot water and then turned off the tap, seeking out a sponge before she returned to the bedroom, pouring the hot water into the bowl which the ghost had previously set on the bedside table. She checked the temperature several times until she was happy with it and then, wringing out the sponge, she set to work.

Swiftly, gently, she wiped the girl down, slowly revealing the delicate features beneath the grime. She really was a tiny little thing. Five or six at most, she guessed, although Madame Giry knew that malnourishment was prone to making children look much younger than they actually were. Such had been the case with her Meg, who even now was tight-skinned and scrawny, lacking the slender curves of her fellow ballerinas.

Some of the dirt was very stubborn. Madame Giry paid particular attention to these areas, until she realised that they were in fact bruises - not particularly surprising on a child of her age, but the ugly, purpling mark that cupped her face, running from her temple to the underside of her jaw, caused her to feel a prickle of concern.

On her back, Madame Giry found the first scars.

Her ministrations revealed several long, red stripes, biting deep into the flesh. She recognised the marks of a belt. Some of the scars were barely healed, suggesting that the girl had been beaten very recently. A wave of nausea swept over her. The ghost claimed that the girl was in his care, and it sickened her to think that he might be responsible for such horrible injuries. Whatever crimes he might have committed, she had always thought him a gentleman.

As she lowered the girl back onto the counterpane, she came briefly to consciousness, her large eyes dark as sloe berries, and Madame Giry could not help but think of her own daughter, who had been much the same age when the fever had come.

Throwing a disgusted expression in the direction of the open doorway, Madame Giry went to chest of drawers, hoping to find a thin sheet with which to cover the girl in case the ghost returned. Opening the top drawn she found that it contained several night gowns and chemises, neatly folded. But they belonged to a grown woman, confirming her suspicion that this was the girl's room. In fact, she doubted that it had been used by anyone for quite some time. The gas lamps spat and sputtered from neglect, and there was a strange, musty smell. The fiend had probably been keeping her in the scullery!

A moan, followed by a soft, indistinct murmur, drew her attention back to the bed. Madame Giry found a sheet in the second drawer and returned quickly to the girl's side. Her body began to tremble as Madame Giry covered her with the sheet and tucked it beneath her armpits, her lips moving in mimicry of speech.

Recognising the first symptoms of the delirium which accompanied the fever in its most deadly form, Madame Giry returned to the chest of drawers to fetch the shears, her expression grim.

She hoped the girl was stronger than she looked.

* * *

The hours passed, and Erik returned to his former occupation of pacing back and forth, only desisting when it became apparent that he was wearing a hole in the library rug.

Beyond the crackling of the fire, it was very quiet. Not so much as a cough issued from the sick room, and Madame Giry had only emerged once, throwing the remains of the girl's clothing onto the carpet and slamming the door behind her without so much as a glance in his direction. He had gathered these, along with the blankets from the sofa, and burnt them according to her earlier instructions, standing in front of the fire until they were reduced to ashes.

Afterwards, he continued to stare into the flames.

He should never have taken the girl back down into the Communard's dungeon. It had been obvious that she was sick, and another night in the cold, damp cell had surely worsened her condition. If she died then he would never forgive himself.

And if she did not die?

Glancing back towards the bedroom door, he listened carefully, trying in vain to discern any movements. Silence reigned. He knew that Madame Giry was probably wondering where he was but he did not dare venture inside. Beyond the fact that it was Christine's room, his thoughts were far too distracted for him to trust himself to remain reasonable. There were too many facets of his character in the air. Gentleman, ghoul, gaoler - it was worse than spinning plates! He knew that he must strive for consistency if he was to avoid any harm coming to those around him, but in such circumstances it was very difficult. He had always - well, almost always - treated Madame Giry with respect, and yet the girl, if she were sensible of anything, knew him as the worst fiend imaginable.

It was difficult to know how to manage them both at the same time, and so he remained, statued in front of the fire, until it had burned down to the embers, watching as they turned cold and grey.

Eventually a great weariness descended upon him, and it was in this attitude that Madame Giry found him when she finally emerged, her expression ominously grim.

No…

"The fever is passed," she told him, and he almost sagged with relief.

"She will live?"

Madame Giry nodded, although she did not seem especially pleased. "She's a tough little thing. I don't know, but the scrawny ones usually are."

"I am very grateful for your assistance," he said, somewhat awkwardly, and he went to the bureau, opening one of the drawers. "Now of course you must be paid…"

"I do not want your blood money," she spat.

"Pardon?"

"How did you come by the girl? You said she was your ward. Well, if you don't mind me saying, I very much doubt it!

Erik was perplexed by her combative attitude, but saw no reason to conceal the truth - not all of it, at least. "I found her in the cellar," he explained, "gorging herself on figs. It seemed obvious that she did not belong to anyone and so I took her on as my ward."

Her eyes narrowed. "How long ago was this?"

"Two months," he said, discomforted by her scrutiny, "but for obvious reasons I did not reveal myself straight away. I only brought her into my home a few days ago, when I perceived that she was unwell."

"A few days," she murmured. "And you have been caring for her since then?"

"Yes."

It was almost the full truth, he told himself.

Madame Giry seemed satisfied by this explanation. "Well, then. That makes sense. I am pleased to hear it," she said, brusquely, but without her former venom. "But the girl is not out of danger yet. She needs rest, and plenty of fluids. You must see that she doesn't get out of bed before I get back."

Erik felt a little jolt of panic. "Where are you are going?"

"Back to my duties above, if they haven't already given me the sack. What time is it?"

"But you must stay!"

"Are you deaf?" she said, rolling down her sleeves, and smoothing out the folds of her shabby little frock. "I have two jobs to attend to. Now, if you don't mind…"

"I will pay you—"

"And I have already told you that I do not want your money, Monsieur."

Erik was quite not sure how it happened, but Madame Giry was somehow able to compel him to return her to the third cellar, to which she promised to return in a few days time with mutton-broth, of all things, as it would apparently be several weeks before the girl's stomach was strong enough to digest solid food. It was most peculiar, but the woman did not seem in the least bit afraid of him as she rattled off her instructions. In fact she was quite fearless! He appeared to have underestimated her, which had never happened before. For all his faults, Erik had always been an excellent judge of character.

After she was gone, Erik descended into his kitchen, where he prepared another vial of the tonic which Madame Giry, in leaving, had told him to administer every few hours for the girl's throat. Placing it on a tray with a glass and a small jug of water, he made his way through to the library, where he paused on the threshold of Christine's room.

It would only be a few days, he told himself, forcing back the tide of panic that rose in his chest. A few days, and then Madame Giry would return, and this time he would ensure that she did not leave until the girl was well enough to accompany her.

He entered the room. It was quiet and peaceful. Madame Giry had turned down all the lamps save for the one upon the bedside table, which shrouded the girl in its soft light. The counterpane had been removed, and she was laid beneath a thin blanket, wearing what he recognised to be one of Christine's night dresses, which for all its daintiness quite swamped her tiny frame. She appeared, if anything, to be even smaller than the creature he had carried down from the third cellar two days ago, as if she had been shrunk by the fever.

Approaching the bed, he put down the tray and took a closer look. Madame Giry had clipped her matted hair so close to her skull — presumably in an attempt to bring down her temperature — that she resembled the inmate of some asylum.

They made a fine pair…

Reaching out, soft and tentative, he touched the back of his index finger to her cheek. The skin there was rough and sore. Madame Giry had told him that she would shed it like a snake before the illness passed, if she lived.

He felt a sudden shudder. Glancing away, his gaze came to rest upon a certain corner of the room, whose wallpaper was smeared with the dried brown remnants of Christine's blood; the spot where she had beaten herself almost senseless on the night he had attempted to force her to marry him.

It was probably best that he did not think about Christine any more.

Dragging his gaze away from the blood stain, he moved the little tub chair from the dressing table, and, placing it next to the bed, he began his strange vigil.


End file.
